Israel Is Demolishing Gaza’s Cultural Heritage

Gaza might soon be a land without a past. Israeli bombardment from land and air has been so thorough and discriminate that whatever Gazans can claim as their distinct cultural inheritance and artistic achievement is now either rubble and ruin or under serious threat. The Municipal Library is gone. The Central Archives facility has been gutted completely; burned inside was a century’s documentary evidence of Gaza’s urban development. The Edward Said Library, with its English language collection, is likely a ruin too. Souq Al Zawiya, Gaza’s oldest continuous market in the Old City, has been evaporated. The only museum in Rafah is a mass of electrical cabling and dust; little remains of the grand Pasha Palace, where Napoleon once stopped during his Egyptian campaign. The modern Palace of Justice, home of Gaza’s court system, was deliberately demolished in early December. Sometimes Israeli targeting seems churlishly spiteful. The Rashad Al Shawa Center had a theater for films and musicians, stained glass above its central hall, and a small library. It was here, in 1998, with Bill Clinton in the audience, that the Palestine Liberation Organization voted to remove from its charter all references to the destruction of Israel. That fact did not spare the place; the Center is now a husk.