It seemingly flared up without warning; Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, which the Israel authorities report killed 1200 people, with an additional 240 kidnapped. War was immediately declared on Hamas. As coordinated artillery, ground offensive and airstrikes continue in a thin strip of densely populated land so many miles away from Aotearoa New Zealand, Palestinian authorities report, at the time of writing, more than 14,000 people have been killed, with more than 5000 of them children. The air is dirty with dust and buildings have been reduced to rubble. Gaza is no longer a city and will have to be rebuilt.

The long-unresolved conflict between Israel and Palestine has, once again, exploded into human misery and suffering for both sides. Hostages remain in captivity by Hamas and negotiations for their release are ongoing. The most recent update is an agreement between Israel and Hamas for a multi-day truce and the release of 50 hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinians, mostly women and children, jailed in Israel plus some shipments of aid. Some of those released have been detained in Israel since they were children and are now adults.

The blockade preventing food, fuel, electricity and other necessities from reaching Gaza threatens the lives of those who have, for now, escaped death. The truce is critical and will enable aid to move into Gaza but the agreement is only a pause. A permanent ceasefire is needed for a lasting solution to the humanitarian crisis. What is happening to Palestinian people, right now, especially, is shattering to witness, despite the distance of Gaza from here. I write “right now, especially” because the campaign to remove Palestinian people forcibly from Gaza and the West Bank has been more than 100 years in the making.

In public as well as private discussions, some refer to the conflict as “complex” and often this word is used to introduce an unwillingness to enter a discussion. It is too big, too fraught and, perhaps, too far away to feel close. A cursory glance at Wikipedia will find that what has passed parses the worst of man-made constructions. Perspectives captured by media evidence vile attitudes engaging in anti-semitic and Islamophobic rhetoric.

While individuals and groups at a distance from the indiscriminate killing of children debate what words and phrases are best used to propel the right global response to the conflict, underneath there are, of course, ideological differences that, inevitably — if one is to follow the thread to the spool — reveal the politics of sovereignty. Who should stay and who should go are the questions behind why there is so much war and not peace. The way forward has divided the world because we have different answers for such questions, and they are driven by our own ideological positions.

It seems impossible to resolve these disagreements. But the concrete facts remain: people are dying, children are being killed in the thousands and the genocide must stop. And, when it does, engaging with what is left also must be faced. Part of that reckoning ought to include the architecture of the occupation: that which has been built by people, since colonising is man-made, not only in concept but in concrete. It is architectural. It may well seem that the architecture of the occupation, that is, that which is designed and built, is a passive sentinel to the airstrikes, the death, the violence. This, as a final reading of its role in the settler colonisation, would underestimate its instrumentality. It would also endanger a fuller understanding of its long-standing role in the continual erosion of Palestinian sovereignty.

While the time line is much longer, the context for the following discussion begins in 1967, on 27 June, when eastern Jerusalem was occupied by army forces in order to redraw borders established in 1949.

“The problem of planners and architects was not only how to build fast on this ‘politically strategic’ ground, but how to naturalize the new construction projects, make them appear as organic parts of the Israeli capital and the holy city.”

^{-Eyal Weismann, from book: Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation}

British-Israeli architect and founder of research agency and methodology Forensic Architecture, Eyal Weizman, in the book Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, describes the ensuing master plan for the city as an “urban ensemble” with the express purpose of unifying the city. To quote from Hollow Land: “The problem of planners and architects was not only how to build fast on this ‘politically strategic’ ground, but how to naturalize the new construction projects, make them appear as organic parts of the Israeli capital and the holy city. Architecture, the organization, form and style by which these neighbourhoods were built, the way they were mediated, communicated and understood — formed the visual language that was used to blur the facts of occupation and sustain territorial claims of expansion.”¹

In other words, the new architecture was an exercise in erasing the architectural traces of the previous Palestinian occupants, to rewrite the history of the city as embodied in its architecture. Weizman notes that architecture deployed for such agendas was written into the 1968 master plan for Jerusalem, which “professed its commitment of ‘colonial regionalism’, a sensibility characteristic of the period of British rule over Palestine (1917– 1948), especially in its earlier years”.²

Later, Weizman addresses the way in which the occupation has taken shape in space, rendering the occupied states of Gaza and the West Bank as hollow lands whereby below the land, where the occupation holds fast, the resistance must burrow in its rebellion. Meanwhile, above the surface of the earth, the air is weaponised through military strategies, such as air patrols, herbicidal warfare and drones.

His studies are the result of 20 years of research as an individual and a director of a research centre that has submitted findings to the International Criminal Court. His findings are useful in contextualising the depth, scope and history of the occupation and, consequently, the recent horror that is unfolding in Gaza. And, in his words, “charts the way Israel’s system of control, which evolved in fits and starts throughout the occupation’s first four decades, has, during its fifth decade, hardened into an exceptionally efficient and brutal form of territorial apartheid.”

There are other books, too, although it is the power of architecture, and those who design and build it, which is relevant here. If you felt a sense of growing madness, this makes sense. I know, for myself, other than the temptation of chain-smoking, I have looked at the sky and prayed often for the freedom of people who have been forced to fight for it. But, prayers alone won’t cut it; the people of the hollow lands must have their freedom.

References

^{1. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. Verso, 2007, p. 26.}

^{2. Ibid, p. 27.}

^{3. Eyal Weizman. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. Verso, 2017, p. x.}