“I would eliminate the first row of houses in Beit Jala. And if the shooting continued? I would eliminate the second row of houses; and so on. I know the Arabs … For them, there is nothing more important than their house. So, under me, you will not see a child shot next to his father. It is better to level an entire village with bulldozers—row after row.”

— Ariel Sharon, nicknamed ‘the Butcher of Beirut’ and later ‘the Bulldozer,’ when asked what should be done with the Palestinians in the West Bank.

The Israeli war crimes against Palestine and Lebanon since October 2023 have not been limited to the genocide of hundreds of thousands of people; they have also extended to the destruction of the built environment, including homes, streets, neighborhoods, infrastructure, and buildings of cultural and historical significance, among others. The assault against all essential components that form cities and towns is not mere collateral damage but a deliberate and systematic effort by the Zionist entity to target the physical structures that make life on this land possible and through which we assert our existence as a society.

Understanding why such force is deployed against the structures we have built goes beyond the Israeli pretense of creating ‘buffer zones’ to ensure ‘Israeli security.’ It first requires recognizing the central role of land in settler-colonial projects.

The Centrality of Land

Land is the defining feature of settler-colonial structures – the foundation upon which a settler-colonial project is built. This territoriality operates through a “logic of elimination,”¹ where erasure is a precondition for settler-colonialism to exist.

Over the past five hundred years, as European settlers built their empires, they insisted that the lands they conquered were empty – a concept that continues to shape green colonialism and so-called conservation practices today.² Promoting the narrative that the lands they colonized were uninhabited was a deliberate strategy used to justify their dominance and claims of ownership while simultaneously concealing the extermination of Indigenous peoples.

The ‘Discovery’ doctrine, first used by Portuguese and Spanish settlers in Africa and the Americas (and later adopted by other European colonizers), and the Terra Nullius paradigm – most prominently used by British settlers in Australia and New Zealand, the French in North America, and the Dutch in South Africa – provided a legal framework through which they justified claiming lands as vacant, neglected, or unproductive upon their arrival, while dismissing and dehumanizing the millions of Indigenous peoples who were already residing there.

Following this same pattern, the Israelis deceptively propagated the notion that Palestine was a “land without people for a people without a land” as a tool to legitimize and justify their occupation. The idea that Palestinian land was a ‘desert’ is both satirical and absurd, considering it is located in one of the most strategically significant areas in the world – an ancient region that has been continuously inhabited by numerous civilizations throughout history.³ Zionists, however, were largely successful in spreading this falsehood.

This refusal to acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ presence created the conditions for ethnic cleansing, genocide, and various forms of violence, including the destruction of the conditions that make life possible on a territory, all in order to achieve the ultimate settlers’ objective: clearing the land of any obstacles to annexation and replacement.

Clearing the Land Through Urbicide

Urbicide literally means “killing the urban,” with “urban” referring to the features that define towns and cities. More specifically, urbicide is described as “both the destruction of the built environment that comprises the fabric of the urban as well as the destruction of the way of life specific to such material conditions.”⁴

It is also worth adding that urbicide can encompass domicide, defined as “the killing of homes,” culturcide, referring to “the killing of culture,” and even ecocide, which is “killing the natural environment.”⁵

Urbicide has been a consistent Israeli policy since the establishment of the entity. During the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing ‘catastrophe,’ 530 Palestinian urban areas, towns, and villages were entirely erased, with over 180 of them being transformed into recreational sites or national parks.⁶ Since 1967, approximately 60,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished.

In fact, this has been far from an occasional occurrence; it is an enduring process that does not always take the form of a sudden, large-scale event. Slow urbicide is a routine practice in Palestine. The demolition of homes, streets, neighborhoods (which are often renamed), infrastructure, and sources of livelihood is an everyday phenomenon at the heart of Israel’s mechanism to uproot Palestinians. This process is also accompanied by the construction of walls, checkpoints, the imposition of sieges, control of movement, and the fragmentation of Palestinian land, which continues to shrink as Jewish settlements expand. This falls within Israel’s demographic engineering strategy, aimed at minimizing Palestinian presence and ensuring the expansion of Jewish dominance. As Ehud Barak noted, demography is an “existential” matter for Israel.⁷

Since October 2023, 90% of Gaza’s population, equivalent to almost a million people, has been displaced.⁸ Now, they have no functioning city or homes to return to. Israel has razed 70% of Gaza’s total infrastructure to the ground, equivalent to the destruction of 160,000 housing units, with a further 276,000 units severely or partially damaged.⁹ Without basic infrastructure to sustain life, a new reality is established in which Palestinians are left with no option but to either leave this now apocalyptic city or remain and die.

This was confirmed by Trump’s most recent comment to “clean out” Gaza, describing it as “a demolition site” and stating that Arab nations should “build housing at a different location,” insisting that Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza.¹⁰ Israel’s plan from the beginning has been to enforce perpetual displacement, prohibit any possibility of return, and ultimately, seek total eradication.

In South Lebanon, Israel wiped out 37 border towns¹¹ throughout the war and has continued to demolish houses and shoot at anyone trying to return home, despite the ceasefire agreement. It also recently declared its plan to continue occupying five Lebanese hills.

History, Identity, and Memory

Massacring the city and transforming it into an uninhabitable wasteland is designed to not only erase its people from geography but also to remove them from history. Centuries of history have been wiped away through the Israeli execution of urbicide in both Gaza and Lebanon, with over 200 heritage sites now lying in ruins. These legacies, passed down from our ancestors, serve as a bridge between our past, present, and future continuity on this land.

In November, a so-called 71-year-old “historian” named Zeev Erlich was killed after infiltrating Lebanese territory with the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to examine archaeological sites and search for alleged biblical evidence to support the Israeli narrative. He had previously published a book on Jewish history in Gaza that “strengthened the connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.”¹² In fact, Israel has long used archaeology as a tool to colonize more land. By erasing all material traces and archaeological evidence of Palestinian or Lebanese historical presence, the settlers can then “validate” their own ‘historical land claims,’ asserting that no symbol, monument, record, or proof exists that does not align with or challenge the Israeli narrative of history.¹³

Some of the targeted sites in Gaza include one of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries, museums with Canaanite artifacts, and libraries containing rare Quran manuscripts as well as ancient books on philosophy and medicine.¹⁴ In Lebanon, we are talking about the 5,000-year-old ancient city of Tyre, the historic town of Mhaibib with 2,000 years old structures, the ancient Tibnin fortress that can be traced back to the Bronze Age, the Shamaa citadel originating from the 12th century, and many others.

Wiping out heritage sites, along with places of worship, libraries, archives, museums, and cultural centers, amounts to a campaign of cultural cleansing aimed at striking at the very foundation of our society. Stripping us of these physical representations of our roots—those that tell our story and reflect our values and traditions—is an attack on our identity. Even the houses reduced to rubble, the markets, shops, schools, and parks are not merely structures devoid of meaning; they are repositories of memories and shared experiences. These are places where people express themselves, share social ties, celebrate together, and go about their daily lives.

Israel’s urbicide has been an attempt to redefine the significance of a place we have constructed over the course of thousands of years, and how we relate to it, by drastically transforming it beyond the point of recognition—severing that sense of familiarity and enforcing a sense of alienation aimed at breaking our will to remain.

Environmental Cost of Urbicide

Urbicide also comes with an astronomical environmental cost. While it will take some time before comprehensive assessments reveal the full extent of the environmental catastrophe inflicted on Lebanon and Gaza, a UN Habitat assessment focused on South Lebanon only (excluding the Beqaa) found almost 14,000,000 tonnes of debris¹⁵ generated from the destruction of buildings. The United Nations Environment Programme’s latest debris quantification in Gaza, revealed that the Israeli urbicide has left over 50,000,000 tonnes of debris¹⁶ in Gaza’s streets. This is ‘unprecedented’ devastation that could take more than 21 years to be fully cleared.

Experts have warned that the debris resulting from the extensive bombings contains threatening substances that contaminate the air, soil, and water resources—ranging from dust and toxic gases to asbestos, heavy metals, and a variety of other hazardous chemicals. Not to mention, there are still 12,000¹⁷ decomposing martyrs’ bodies buried among the wreckage, along with thousands of unexploded ordnance.¹⁸

Additionally, this environmental catastrophe will have far-reaching impacts that transcend Palestinian and Lebanese territories. The emissions from Israel’s war against Gaza and Lebanon jeopardize global climate mitigation efforts. A widely shared study published in January 2024 revealed that within the first 120 days alone, emissions from Israel’s war against Gaza ranged between 420,000 and 650,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, equivalent to the total annual emissions of 26 countries.¹⁹ The total amount of emissions released over the course of 15 months has yet to be determined, but the figures are expected to be alarmingly massive.

Conclusion

Today, reclaiming the places we have lost and rebuilding is an existential fight upon which our collective survival hinges. The transformation of the toxic wasteland created by Israel into vibrant places thriving with life once again is an indispensable act of resistance against erasure. Reinforcing our sense of belonging to the land, which Israel has systematically sought to eradicate, begins with restoring the critical infrastructures that would allow devastated cities, towns and villages to function once more, enabling displaced people to return home. This must be done carefully, retaining the place’s sense of identity, holding on to its historical memory, preserving its cultural significance, and repairing damaged heritage sites, all while simultaneously healing and regenerating the land from contamination. Mending our bleeding wounds, however, also requires coming to terms with the fact that the struggle for liberating our lands is still in its early stages.