In , under a zombie ceasefire, sporadic explosions and the monotonous, lethal noise of automatic weapons can still be heard. But, behind the semi-frozen war, a second war broke out, unfolding in the sphere of urban and architectural planning. The future of the territory — and, perhaps, of itself — depends on its outcome.
The conflict involves two antagonistic plans for the physical reconstruction of the human landscape. Two years of relentless bombing reduced urban settlements in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet to rubble. Almost 300 thousand houses and apartments were converted into 60 million tons of rubble. In a way, the result forms the dream of the modern urban planner: starting from scratch, drawing ideal lines on blank paper.
Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin (1925) called for the complete demolition of an extensive portion of central Paris to make way for a collection of 60-story cruciform towers surrounded by geometric housing estates. The ghost of the main author of the Charter of Athens, the original manifesto of modern architecture, circulates among the ruins of Gaza. His vision is condensed in , formulated by American and Israeli advisors with input from Tony Blair’s institute.
Great formalizes the concept of the “Gaza Riviera”, made famous in and reposted by Trump in February. According to the plan, Gaza’s precarious urbanism is at the root of the “permanent insurgency” and should be replaced by a series of “modern smart planned cities”.
The conceptual images display a landscape of immense futuristic towers surrounded by repetitive suburbs and lined up along an artery of highways parallel to the coast. “The Gaza waterfront could be very valuable,” proclaimed Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, at a conference at Harvard. The “Gaza Riviera” expresses, in the urban sphere, the criminal ambition of ethnic cleansing: to leap from the computer to reality, it requires the “voluntary relocation” of at least a quarter of the territory’s population.
Urban resistance took shape in an alternative project: the Phoenix Plan, drawn up by around 700 Palestinians, experts and students, from the occupied territories and abroad, without the participation of the . “There is a long heritage, cities that have existed for millennia. It is not good practice to simply ignore everything and start again”, explains Shelly Culbertson, an American researcher at an independent American institute. Fênix aims to rebuild, not reinvent.
According to the Palestinian plan, the new Gaza would be similar to the old one, but modernized and tree-lined — and, crucially, without the Hamas tunnels. Cities would be reborn in the same places, as compact, dense nuclei, made up of modest four- to eight-story buildings and circulation routes organized around public transport. In its surroundings, the plots of small family agricultural fields would resurface.
The value of the past emerges as a split between antagonistic concepts. The Great abhors history: it wants to nullify it. Fênix envisions a future rooted in tradition. Its very existence, on computer screens, indicates the persistence of a Palestinian nation seeking the right to establish itself as a state.
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