A Territory in Conflict - (Culture Politics & the Built Environment) by Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat (Hardcover)

About the Book

A Groundbreaking Study of the Urban and Architectural History of Gaza

Book Synopsis

A Territory in Conflict explores Israeli and Palestinian projects of modernization and development in the Gaza Strip, from the outset of Israel's military occupation in 1967 to the Oslo Accords of 1993. Rather than reduce the Gaza Strip to an arena of war and violence, Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat resurrects the urban and architectural history of Gaza's cities and the varied perspectives and identities of the people who shaped them. Through a close examination of planning activities in occupied Palestinian territory focusing on development, settlement, and security, her book highlights the collision between Israeli occupation, Palestinian nationalism, and regional peace processes; politics of class and citizenship; contestation between camps and cities; and the tensions inherent in Israeli development policies designed to establish lasting control over the territory's demographics and resources. Abreek-Zubiedat probes the power of architecture in conflict zones, illustrating the agency of Gaza's cultural elite: its mayors, architects, and engineers. At the same time, she draws attention to alternative voices, Gaza's local inhabitants and refugees--illuminating the conflicts, complexities, and contradictions of settler colonialism in the Middle East. Her innovative approach to urbanization, resettlement, and rehabilitation in the Gaza Strip offers a groundbreaking account of the Israel-Palestine conflict that goes beyond the limited framework of colonizer/colonized binary, restoring Gaza's cities in the public eye and giving voice to the people who inhabit them.

Review Quotes

A Territory in Conflict provides a much-needed corrective to the dominant erasure of Gaza's rich spatial history and its reduction to an object of violence. Drawing on intensive research informed by an original methodology, Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat documents how post-1948 settler colonial development schemes transformed Gaza into the narrow confines of the 'Gaza Strip' and subjected the territory to the exigencies of bureaucratic humanitarianism, racism, and economic extraction. This timely volume challenges the reduction of Gaza to an ahistorical site of violent occupation, devoid of architecture, culture, and institutions, and reinstates the agency of Palestinians in contesting the colonized built environment.--Patricia Morton, University of California, Riverside

A Territory in Conflict breaks new ground not only in uncovering a great deal of new knowledge about Gaza's material history, but also in theorizing the ties of architectural historiography to conflict, violence, development, and colonialism.--Panayiota Pyla, University of Cyprus

In the depths and depravities of Gaza's devastation appears A Territory in Conflict. We should all adopt as our motto Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat's phrase that the past 'must be uncovered against its negation.' She has amply demonstrated the wisdom of these words through her steady gaze and her passionate commitment to deep research, all in the most difficult and urgent of circumstances.--Mark Crinson, Birkbeck, University of London

About the Author

Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat is assistant professor of architectural history and criticism at the Tel Aviv University and head of the research lab Spaces-in-Transition.