The book, titled “Deconstruction: Genocide Architecture” (Undergrounding: The Architecture of Genocide), was reviewed by “Foreign Policy” magazine in a lengthy article titled “The architecture of Israeli genocide in Gaza.”

Although many Americans believe, according to previous polls, that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Strip over the past three years, efforts aimed at comprehensively understanding what happened there and holding Israel accountable for it have not achieved notable results so far.

The case pending before the International Court of Justice stalled due to American and European opposition, while the debate over characterizing what happened turned into a sharp political debate occupied with definitional disputes more than with facts on the ground, while student protests that erupted in the spring of 2024 were violently suppressed before largely receding.

From this exact gap, Weizman tries to tell the story of the systematic destruction that the Gaza Strip was subjected to street by street, farm by farm, and hospital by hospital.

Documentary methodology away from political debate

Weizman’s project is based on the idea that focusing on field evidence and documented facts allows bypassing futile political debates. The book relied on analyzing thousands of photos, video clips, recordings, and testimonies, which the researcher’s team used to prepare a digital map documenting destruction operations throughout the Strip.

The author does not stop at immediate documentation, but rather presents a broader historical narrative of Gaza’s development, reviewing its position as one of the most fertile agricultural regions in the Middle East before 1948, before tracing the transformations it underwent since the Nakba, passing through the Israeli occupation in 1967, and reaching the siege imposed on it since 2007; a siege that Weizman considers more than just a security measure, but a long-term means to control the population and weaken their life requirements, before escalating into large-scale military operations following the October 7, 2023 attack.

Weizman confirms that the methods of war in Gaza were not entirely new, but rather came as an extension of Israeli military practices that preceded them by many years. He devotes a large chapter to analyzing the tunnel war between Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, explaining that repeated military attacks from 2008 until before the 2023 war did not succeed in eliminating the tunnel network, but sometimes contributed to creating conditions that helped its expansion.

He also discusses the Israeli narrative regarding the size and complexity of this network, considering that some promoted perceptions were used to justify the extent of destruction that befell the Strip’s urban surface.

From targeting fighters to destroying life requirements

The central idea upon which Weizman builds his analysis lies in that Israeli military attacks were not limited to targeting fighters or military infrastructure, but extended to systematically destroying the requirements of civilian life.

Several chapters of the book take on the character of an architectural forensic investigation, as the author explains in detail how his team reconstructed the facts of specific war crimes based on technical and field evidence, accusing at the same time Israeli spokespersons of presenting misleading or selectively edited narratives.

Examples reviewed in the book include bulldozing entire residential neighborhoods, destroying farms and agricultural facilities, targeting public buildings including hospitals, schools, universities, places of worship, and economic facilities, along with expanding buffer zones and forcing residents into repeated displacement toward areas described as “safe” while in reality lacking the minimum requirements for survival.

The book does not overlook the environmental impact of this destruction, as it considers that ruining water, sewage, agricultural land, and soil networks will leave long-term impacts exceeding the period of the military operations themselves; vast areas of agricultural land went out of service, and thousands of greenhouses, orchards, and livestock were destroyed, threatening the Strip’s ability to restore its agricultural production in the future.

Toward a broader definition of genocide

Weizman concludes that understanding what happened in Gaza cannot be limited to the number of victims or the scale of urban destruction alone, but also requires analyzing how the land, environment, and urban space were altered, so that the destruction of life conditions itself becomes an integral part of the military operation. From this standpoint, he calls for expanding the concept of genocide to include, alongside killing and displacement, the destruction of the environment, infrastructure, and conditions that make the continuation of life possible in the first place.

Thus, according to “Foreign Policy”, the book presents a documentary and analytical vision based on architectural forensic investigations, maps, and digital evidence to reconstruct war events, raising a deeper discussion regarding the nature of military operations in Gaza and their humanitarian and environmental impacts, and considering that reshaping space and destroying life requirements represent a fundamental pivot for understanding what the Strip witnessed during the war years.