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Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope, edited by Michael Sorkin and Deen Sharp. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2021. 348 pages. $70.00.
Unsilencing Gaza: Reflections on Resistance, by Sara Roy. London: Pluto Press, 2021. 278 pages. $99.00 cloth; $26.95 paper; $14.95 e-book.
In recent decades, academic production exploring Palestine from a plethora of angles has exploded. Every year hundreds of academic articles are published, and dozens of doctoral theses are submitted in universities across the world. Enormous amounts of ink have been spilled on the conflict and the history of the geographical area to which it is confined. Still, there is one area where a particular paucity is conspicuous: the Gaza Strip. Books in English on Gaza would fit in one average-sized library shelf.1
The scarcity of writings about Gaza has one obvious and one surreptitious explanation. The area has been closed to the outside world for the last two decades. Entrance to Gaza is restricted by Israeli authorities, which have a permit system in place that becomes more stringent every year. The area is otherwise not a particularly attractive spot to visit, as it is frequently the site of highintensity military clashes, extremely poor, and covered from one end to the other in squalid refugee camps that engulf parts of otherwise dilapidated towns.
The other reason why so little has been written about Gaza is because the territory and, most of all, its population are in many ways invisible, perceived as a giant slum filled to the brim with a nameless, stateless mass of people or as a terrorist den. This explains another peculiarity about writing on Gaza, namely that most works examine the subject through the lens of conflict. There are few, isolated examples - in Arabic - of in-depth works on history, sociology, anthropology, economics, architecture, and urban planning. Furthermore, many publications about Gaza are based on secondary sources by authors who have never actually visited the area or only done so fleetingly.
This is a pity because Gaza would be a delight to social scientists. There is no shortage of subject matter. Gaza is not only a crossroads of civilizations, the very pin on which Asia and Africa hinge, but also central to one of the major conflicts of the...