Erasing history: Israel's war crimes against Gaza's cultural heritage

On the fourteenth of December 1998, the plane of former US President Bill Clinton landed at Gaza International Airport.

On that day, Clinton met with the Former Leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, at the Rashad Shawa Cultural Center in the Gaza Strip, which witnessed the first legislative council then.

Twenty-five years have passed since the visit; however, neither the airport nor the cultural center remains.

The Israeli war machine, indifferent to distinguishing between stones and humans, decided to demolish what remained of historical books and manuscripts that tell the story of civilizations and peoples who lived in the region.

The Rashad Shawa Cultural Center was not the sole target of destruction.

Both the public library and the central archive building belonging to the municipality of Gaza were utterly destroyed.

In the face of this reality and Israel's deliberate targeting of what remains of the history of the Gaza Strip, the question arises: How can this history be protected?

Thus, alongside the killing of civilians and the destruction of the Strip, Israel's war crimes extend to erasing any trace of Gaza's culture and history.