On the Violation of Gaza City

Author: علي حبيب الله

Every media transmission, whether journalistic or rhetorical, regarding the recent events in the city of Gaza, remains – despite the truth of some – less real than what the Gazans themselves describe, the ones who remain in the city weeks after the campaign to fortify it and the displacement of its people to the south, and after two years of the brutality of the war on the strip in general.

The Gazans, despite their cries over the horrors of war, are the ones most entitled to produce the narrative of their extermination. Any of us may express a valid opinion about the war, and some of our feelings may resonate about Gaza and its people, yet the truth remains in Gaza, found solely in what the Gazans themselves say. This war has not uncovered the inadequacies, betrayals, and complicity that previous wars have revealed; rather, the "claim" is the most significant thing exposed and revealed by this war.

The Gazans do not produce a narrative of their resilience or defeat, that binary that those outside who are not paying the cost of war, among Palestinians and Arabs in general, continuously produce; instead, the Gazans produce a narrative of their survival and the salvation of their children, as one Gazan recently told us.

Two years have passed without the machinery of war stopping even for a day. It goes back and forth with its teeth in the flesh of the Gazans around the clock. Despite the narrow prospects of stopping this dirty war, especially after the stalling of the negotiating process, amid the targeting of its Hamas leadership in the capital of the sponsoring state for mediating an end to the war: Doha, the Gazans still have something to lament other than their souls: the city of Gaza itself, whose bombardment of its buildings and architectural history brings them as much pain as the shelling of their lives.

A city whose heritage and history date back nearly 5,000 years, is being erased amidst a deliberate blackout in the daylight and dark nights of recent days.

The war came to Jabalia, the beach, Nuseirat, Maghazi, and other camps, and towns in the north and south of the strip, from Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia to Deir al-Balah and Rafah. Nevertheless, the assault on the city of Gaza itself remains a deeper anguish in the hearts of the Gazans.

One Gazan in exile tells us: "Every camp in Gaza and demographic area in the strip that the war has aimed to erase can be rebuilt, compensated for, or even forgotten at the level of space and place, as they are termed 'the place'. However, the city that the brutality of the war machine recently targets affects the existence of Gazans more than ever during these two years of war, as this last war has impacted what can no longer be restored or rebuilt of its architectural landmarks and its social and human realms. Who will bring us back the Omar Mosque?".

Israeli air force planes bombed and completely destroyed the Omar Mosque on December 8, 2023. That mosque has held within its walls and beneath it all of Gaza's spiritual heritage, which has fluctuated with the tides of time throughout the city's history for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

This unprecedented targeting of the city, since the war began, aims not to "fortify" Gaza but to "grind it down" – meaning to turn it to sand – according to what one Arab Knesset member relayed from certain leaders in the fascist Israeli government last month.

The bombing campaign carried out by the Israeli air force on the city's towers and residential complexes in recent weeks seeks not only to empty the city of its inhabitants for the purpose of displacing them and preventing them from returning, nor under the pretext of using the towers by the resistance to monitor and observe the positions of the occupation army, but rather to erase and eliminate every establishment and landmark that still exists, signaling to the Gazans – from the tents of their displacement surrounding them – a hope for survival and resuming its conditions once the war stops.

The targeting of Gaza city has dimensions that surpass mere retaliatory or security purposes; it touches upon the psychological aspect for the Gazans, connected to the hope for survival and the instinct to exist.

Displacement, harsh as it was, was possible to the southern strip until the last two months of the war, just as leaving the strip to outside was available in the first year for some Gazans through the Rafah crossing, for a price. However, this amount is no longer sufficient to cover the burdens of displacement within the strip itself due to the high transport costs, the lack of tents, and even the spaces available to set them up, which have now become exceedingly expensive to rent.

The longer the war lasts, the more it encroaches upon the nature of many Gazans and disrupts the bonds of compassion and mutual aid that they have known. Due to all this, displacement has become so harsh that some Gazans preferred death over it.

Gaza is covered only by the ashes of war, which has become the color of daily death within it. A city stripped of all means of survival, including the tools to cover death in the media, after cutting off the internet for hundreds of thousands of Gazans in recent days.

There is no leadership cover for Gaza, neither within nor outside of it, especially after the targeting of Hamas leaders in Doha, who have been absent from the media scene, despite assurances of their safety from the targeting, leaving Gaza and its people without a leadership facade to guide them on the path of war and its fate.

Meanwhile, the specter of death, whether by bombing, displacement, or hunger, and in recent days thirst as well, looms over Gaza. The rate of killing in the city has escalated to the extent that the toll of martyrs can no longer be counted or enumerated.

Everything we believed might halt the war has not stopped it, as Gaza – standing in the face of its extermination – has lacked an Arab – Islamic stance, both official and public. Those who stood with Gaza, some still do, stand behind Netanyahu's government in front of them.

Gaza, the strip in general, and the city in particular, groan with extermination in every sense of the word... without advocate, nor herald.