The Tunnels Of Gaza (2024) by Antoine Janot

In better times, and there were better times, diners would file into the Al Salam Abu Haseira fish restaurant near sunset to feast on plates of shrimp, grouper, sardines, sea bream, and anything else Gaza’s fishermen would haul in from the sea—given the restrictions on the distance from the shore they were allowed to fish—monitored by the Israeli military. If grouper were aplenty the kitchen would whip up its specialty, zibdiyeh, a tomato-based stew made with pine nuts, herbs, tahina, shrimp, and heavy doses of hot pepper, onions, and lemon. Before the first intifada, in 1987, the tables were often packed with tourists, along with the occasional Israelis who would venture into the Strip for a rare taste of Palestinian cuisine.

The Abu Haseira family began as fishermen, like a sizeable proportion of Gaza’s workforce. The Strip has no cooking schools or culinary institutions, so skills were acquired the old-fashioned way—passed on from family to family, friend to friend, house to house. The family opened one restaurant in Gaza City within sight of the beachfront and its reputation quickly grew. In time it would own 13 restaurants up and down the Strip.

Not far away from Abu Haseira’s restaurant stands Mathaf Al-Funduq, a boutique hotel that offered rooms with sea views and a reception area lit with antique glass lanterns. A rosette stained-glass window was mounted behind the concierge desk. Lining the walls was a pastiche of tiles and precious stones retrieved from historic houses throughout the Strip. But the hotel’s primary appeal was the vast collection of antiques the owner had used to decorate the interior. Mathaf Al-Funduq translates as the Museum Hotel.

More antiques crammed the Old Antique Store, which occupied a prime spot in the middle of the main market of Gaza City’s Old Town. There one could find items of jewelry, a collection of rare English books, long forgotten photo albums filled with family mementos, brass hamsa pendants meant to ward off the evil eye, and much more. To slip through the wafer-thin aisles was to leaf through the history of Gaza flipping back decades. One rare item was a telephone book bearing the year 1938, containing the names of both Palestinian and Jewish families in a distant reminder of now forgotten coexistence.

Besides the many cafes and shisha parlors, popular social centers were once Gaza City’s many bathhouses. At one time the city could count 38 where the residents would not only cleanse themselves but socialize, engage in the latest gossip, and from time to time even swap bits and pieces of worthwhile news. Prior to the war only one remained—the Hammam Al Samara. Its origins are unknown, but it is likely that it was built in pre-Islamic times, probably by a sect of ethnic Jews named the Samaritans, who thrived in the area until invading Christian Crusaders seized control of the Strip and oppressed all those they deemed heretics. But after centuries of decay Muslim rule returned and the Mamluk ruler Sangar Ibn Abdullah restored it in 1328. In its heyday it also served as a medical clinic, where the ailing could seek wholistic remedies for nagging ailments, as the ambience was conducive to healing, medicinal or spiritual. The sound of running water rippled through the rooms as shafts of light seeped through the glass peepholes in its vaulted ceilings. Yet the last bathers visited it on December 7, for the next day it was destroyed by an Israeli missile strike.

Today Gaza is known as one of the most densely populated regions in the world, but today what isn’t as well known is that numerous civilizations have passed through the territory and left a chronicle filling thousands of years. Its first inhabitants remains a mystery, but historical records tell us that it has been dominated by Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, Persians, Nabateans, and Jews. When Christianity appeared in the Middle East it also established a presence, and then came Muslim invaders and Crusader armies from the west, followed by the Ottomans and ultimately British imperialists. Empires came and went but Gaza’s geography was a constant, which meant that for centuries, even millennia, it was prized as a crucial crossroads of trade between Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, and it gradually but inexorably acquired landmarks representing all of the civilizations, cultures, and religions that partook of its history.

An inscription on the ancient Egyptian temple of Medinet Habuin 2000 B.C., makes a reference to the Peleset, who fought against the Egyptians during the reign of Ramses III. In the Old Testament, from the books of Genesis through Joshua, the land is referred to as Plybithen, or Pelestine, in botched Hebrew. In various translations it was named Plististerium, or in Hebrew, Pleshet. Whatever the name, it often stood in modern translation for the Philistines, a fishing and seafaring people that had long settled the Mediterranean coast from Gaza north to today’s Lebanon. Some say this refers to the Palestinians, but this is speculation. But it is certain that by the 800 B.C.E. the region bordering Egypt was referred to by the Assyrians as Palastrine or Pilistine.

A few centuries later the Greek historian Herodotus, in The Histories, described a territory between Egypt and Phoenicia and labeled it Palaistine. In Book 3, chapter 91, he wrote: “The whole of Phoenicia and the part of Syria that is called Palaistine and Cyprus: this is the fifth division.” The term was carried forth by Aristotle and the Roman historians Ovid, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, and others. A few centuries later the territory became part of the Persian Empire and was home to hundreds of thousands of Jews who had stayed in the region once the Kingdom of Israel had waned.

In 332 B.C. Gaza was seized by Alexander the Great in his eastward campaign, and it was the last city he was able to conquer before moving into Egypt, and from then on it became an educational center in Hellenistic philosophy. But then came the Roman era. Gaza was ruled by a 500-member Senate and the city was scattered with temples dedicated to an array of gods, mostly Roman but others left over from the Greek era—Zeus, Helios, and Aphrodite, Appollo and Tyche. Throughout Roman rule Gaza was assured prosperity by receiving grants from a succession of emperors, and prosper it did. As a result Gaza became a center for the development of political theory and cultural advancement. Nabatean traders brought their caravans from Petra and even Elath on the Red Sea. New Testament authors recorded its influence. Turn to the Acts of the Apostles, and Gaza is named as the transport route from Ethiopia northward to Jerusalem.

The arrival of Christianity brought something of a golden era to Gaza. Around 250 C.E. the Roman emperor Philip the Arab initiated the transformation, due to the tolerance he showed toward Christians, and some historians claim him to be the first Christian emperor, though his actual conversion is disputed. At the beginning of the fifth century Saint Porphyrius made it his mission to clear the pagan temples out of Gaza, and he achieved moderate success. The Romans had built a temple for the god Marnas, who served as Gaza’s protector, but in 400 C.E. Christianity became the official religion and centuries later the Byzantine empress Eudokia Ingerina ordered the temple destroyed and a church raised in its place. Christian influence grew, resulting in pilgrimages to the Sinai Peninsula, the mountain of Moses, and St. Caterine’s Monastery being launched from the Strip. In Gaza several monasteries were established, making it an important center in the development of Christian learning.

Before he became the divine prophet of Islam Mohammed had traveled to Gaza several times. His great-grandfather worked there as a merchant, and prospered, and there he is believed to have been buried. In the seventh century, Gaza experienced its first siege when the Byzantine Empire, then in power, was under attack by the Rashidun Caliphate. This lasted three years, and in an example of ever shifting alliances Gaza’s Jews allied themselves with the Byzantines.

Turning a page from Christian rule, with the Muslim takeover Gaza became a center for the writing of Islamic law. For a few hundred years a succession of dynasties swapped power, and then in 1048 the city was seized by the Crusaders, only to be retaken by the Muslim warrior Salah Al-Din later in the century, only to be retaken by Richard the Lionheart a year later. But then, staying true to their reputation for wholesale pillage and destruction, Mongol warriors from central Asia reduced Gaza to ruins in the 13th century. But within a few decades it was back on its feet again, with a castle, a hospital, madrassa, caravansary, and a horse race course. The Syrian geographer Al-Dimashqi extolled its beauty: “So rich in trees it looks like a cloth of brocade spread upon the land!” In 1355 the inimitable traveler Ibn Battuta commented that “it was large and populous and had many madrassas.” But a century of decline led to Gaza being absorbed by the Ottoman Empire, though it brought the territory another period of prosperity that lasted through the 16th century.

This little bit of background helps us to understand the broader significance of the events of the last year. The Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival and its surrounding communities came on October 7, 2023, a day that Israel has named the darkest in its brief history. Two days later Israel initiated a complete blockade on food, water, fuel, and electricity, which had already been strictly regulated since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007—a blockade that could arguably be called a siege in all but name. Two days later the first United Nations aid workers were killed by Israeli forces, and in another two days evacuations began, with Israel ordering all the residents of Gaza City to begin moving south.  

Once the war was underway, one of the first significant casualties, if historic sights can be counted as casualties, was the Byzantine Church of Jabalia in northern Gaza, constructed in 444 C.E. under the reign of the emperor Theodosius II. Twenty-four Byzantine rulers and 14 Muslim caliphs had overseen its 400-square-meter floors decorated with mosaics. The colorful tiles displayed palm trees, animals, and hunting scenes. On the walls were religious texts written in ancient Greek. But in October the church was destroyed, though the date is unknown. Another Byzantine church in the vicinity dates to the fifth century. It is also known for its mosaic floors and Greek inscriptions, but after the Israeli invasion it was converted into a military base.

On October 27 the ground offensive into northern Gaza began. Warnings were sent out that any Palestinians who had not left would be considered insurgents, yet tens of thousands of residents were still in their homes, unable to move or with nowhere to go. And this is when the “better times,” in Gaza terms, took a turn for the worse. On November 3 an airstrike hit the Museum Hotel, turning its elegant reception area into rubble and dust. Before the attack the hotel had rated a 5.0 on TripAdvisor. “Al Mathaf was not only a hotel but a reminder of Gaza’s ancient history,” one review reads. “It contains an exquisite museum of archeology. . . . The rooms are large are beautifully decorated.” “Temporarily closed,” it now says. In the 2008-2009 Israeli assault on Strip the hotel closed to protect its artifacts, some dating to the Bronze Age. Nothing remains of the owner’s collection of antiques. After the bombardment one wall was sprayed with graffiti, left by an Israeli soldier, whose brother was being held as a hostage by Hamas. The remnants of the reception desk and two supporting columns remain standing, as a reminder of what had been.

In the first week of December two historic mosques were destroyed. The first was the Othman bin Qashqar Mosque, on December 7. It had been built in 1220 and was known for its architectural patterns. The next day was more devastating, when another strike turned to ruins the Great Omari Mosque, Gaza’s oldest, which dated to the seventh century and was named after the second caliph of Islam, Omar bin Khattab.

The mosque could claim a unique history as a religious site, embracing an array of faiths that represent almost all of the cultures that have passed through the region. It began as a pagan temple honoring first Philistine and then Roman gods. In the fifth century the Byzantines built a church on the site, acting on a decree of Baldwin III of Jerusalem, but with the Muslim conquest two centuries later it was turned into a mosque. The Crusaders arrived in 1149 to convert the mosque into a church, naming it in honor of St. John the Baptist, but this victory was short lived. In 1187 the Muslim warrior Salah Al-Din transformed it back into a mosque, but this was also short lived, as invading Mongols from the central Asia, acting as Mongol conquerors usually acted as conquerors, ravaged the site in 1260. Three hundred years later it was given fresh life by the Ottomans, who restored it once again but as a mosque, with blue-carpeted floors and stained glass windows, and as a mosque it remained until the Israeli strike. A memento of the mosque’s complex religious history existed in the form of a shofar and menorah that had been carved on a column, engravings of Jewish ritual objects inscribed on its foundation, along with an inscription in Greek and Hebrew reading, “Hononyah, son of Jacob.”

The mosque once boasted a library filled with thousands of books and manuscripts, including old copies of the Quran, biographies of Prophet Mohammed and ancient books on philosophy, medicine and Sufi mysticism. Many were lost during the Crusades and even more centuries later during World War I, leaving only 62 books in its collection. The Israeli airstrike on December 8 destroyed what was left.

The pagan temple the Byzantine church replaced was dedicated to the Canaanite fertility god, Dagon. According to the Book of Judges this is the temple that Samson had toppled by pressing apart its pillars, bringing about his doom. He is believed to be buried somewhere beneath it.

Colonial history is also intertwined with the longer history of Gaza. At the beginning of the 19th century the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte made a foray into the Middle East, first into Egypt and then angling north into Palestine, staying for a few nights in the Pasha Palace, or Qasr Al-Basha, which had been built in the 13th century by a Mamluk sultan, Zahir Baibars, to defend the territory from incursions to the west by Crusader armies and the east by hostile Mongol tribes. Napoleon was so impressed with Gaza’s strategic location that he called it “the gateway of Africa, the door to Asia.” The Pasha Palace became another of Gaza’s many significant sights, with palm trees growing in its garden, eventually rising higher than the second-story rooftops. In 2010 the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism converted it into a museum, housing artifacts representing centuries of Gaza’s history dating back to the ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. But on December 11 it became the target of another airstrike. Now all that remains is a single wall and its decorative archway.

Every Christmas Gaza’s Christians would fill the Church of St. Porphyrius, tucked within the lanes of Gaza’s Old City, named for the saint who made it his mission to rid the territory of pagan temples, and moderate success is something he may be proud to have achieved. To signify his accomplishment, a church was built in 425 on the site of just such a temple, and Christian scholars believe it to be one of the oldest churches in the world. In previous Gaza wars it had served as a place of shelter, but on October 17, 10 days into the war, it failed to protect those who sought refuge there. Seventeen Palestinians died when its roof was struck and collapsed. They now join St. Porphyrius, who was buried in one of its corners.

About two weeks after the ground invasion the military began storming Al Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip. Originally a British army barracks, it had been converted into a hospital in 1946, when Palestine was still a geopolitical fact, if under British domination. A litany of bombardments that continued for months reduced it to a charred shell with the stench of death emanating from its corridors. Most of Gaza City was already in ruins and further directives were issued to the remaining Palestinians to move further south to declared “safe zones,” such as Deir El Balah in central Gaza. But these pronouncements soon proved false, as the bombardment of the people of Gaza, along with the necessities that sustain day-to-day life, along with the symbols that have formed its history and heritage for several thousand years, became one and the same.

Another heavily damaged sites was the St. Hilarion Monastery, named for the fourth-century saint credited with initiating the monastic tradition in Palestine. Like all monks he sought solitude, building a small and simple room for himself, but his ascetic life attracted attention and he soon became a source for medical cures and spiritual advice. His hovel gradually grew into a religious complex, and it evolved into a stopping point for Christian pilgrims passing between Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. St. Hilarion’s growing reputation would eventually supersede his desire for solitude. In time his plot would grow include five churches, a handful of traditional baths, and a ceremonial hall for baptisms, and so it remained as a reminder of Christianity’s ongoing presence in Gaza. But then came the most recent war. After suffering a series of bombardments and crossfire it is now severely battle scarred.

As the weeks passed and the missile attacks and bombardments continued, Palestinians were ordered to evacuate further south, to Khan Younis. Yet many remained in the north, unable to relocate or too frightened given the indiscriminate nature of the attacks. But Khan Younis failed to be any safer than the north. Declared “safe zones” were routinely hit—and more custodian’s of Gaza’s heritage. The Qarara Cultural Museum had been established in 2016 to house 3,000 ancient artifacts that recall the early Canaanites and the Bronze Age from the second century B.C. Yet it was the target of a missile strike in October, and almost nothing remains of the exhibits except splinters of glass and chips of pottery.

Not only historic sites but contemporary cultural venues have suffered. Before the war, in a Gaza prior to the war, Beit Sitti, an upscale restaurant and café tucked within a historic house, was the setting for live music on Thursday nights while young Gazans gathered for dinner, to drink coffee and tea, smoke waterpipes, and listen to live Arab music. It sat in a breezy atrium filed with caged birds and wall-climbing plants, and was owned by a popular playwright and cartoonist. It has been spared total destruction but was heavily damaged by bombardments, though it never presented any military value.

North to south was the general direction of Israel’s attacks, and the population was driven the same way, as each pronounced “safe zone” yielded to further series of air strikes, ultimately followed by ground assaults. Rafah, on the border with Egypt, became the last refuge for Palestinians whose homes had been destroyed, after the schools and hospitals where they had sought shelter. Yet very early in the war—three days after the Hamas attack—Rafah too had been hit. The Rafah Museum had spent 30 years acquiring a collection of ancient coins, jewelry, and other artifacts, earning the prestige of being regarded as Gaza’s primary center of Palestinian history. But on October 11, only a few days into the war, it was reduced to ruins.

Before the war the Gaza Strip had 320 sites of historical significance, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, representing all of the religious and ethnic groups that have occupied, ruled, and passed through the territory for thousands of years. Four houses in Gaza City had been converted into cultural heritage centers—As-Saqqa Palace, Sahat Al-Alami, the Khader Al-Tarazani House, and the Ghussein House. In the Tell Al-Hawa district the Orthodox Cultural Center preserved a reminder of Gaza’s Orthodox Christian past. Now, two-thirds of these sites have been demolished or badly damaged. In Gaza City the Sayed Al-Hashim Mosque, which dates to the 12th century and is believed to be the burial place of one of Prophet Mohammed’s great-grandfathers, has also been lost.

Much of what has not been destroyed in the current war has often been looted, recently or in times past. Located in the Sheikh Rashan neighborhood of Gaza City was a warehouse of the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, holding over 4,000 ancient artifacts. The Israeli army seized control of it after Israel captured Gaza in the 1967 war. A mosaic was found in a 1,400-year-old synagogue portraying King David playing a harp. It was moved to Jerusalem’s Israel Museum.

From the beginning of its history what has made Gaza a prize for empires and every other ruling power that controlled the territory has been its importance as a trading center, and the passageway for international trade has long been the sea. From 1100-800 B.C.E. Gaza’s most important seaport was known as Anthedon Harbor. Over time it grew into an independent city under a succession of rulers—neo-Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman, later Byzantine and then a series of Islamic dynasties. Nearby was the harbor of Maiumas, a name that was derived from an Egyptian term meaning “maritime place.”

As a prime example of the seaports of the eastern Mediterranean, along with Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Caesarea (in today’s Israel), Sidon and Tyre (in Lebanon), it represented the trade links that had connected the Levant to Europe for more than a thousand years. This made it a candidate for nomination to the UNESCO World Heritage list. Recently a Roman temple, a collection of villas and warehouses, and living quarters decorated with mosaic floors were unearthed at Anthedon, which led to it being preserved as an archeological site. But early in the war a series of Israeli airstrikes turned it into unrecognizable rubble. The same fate was shared by Tell Al-Ayul in central Gaza, a fortified city that was first established around 2000 B.C.E., the beginning of the known history of the Gaza Strip.

Not far away, early last year a French and Palestinian archeologists discovered what is believed to be a Roman necropolis containing a minimum of 137 tombs with skeletons still intact. Then came the Hamas attack on October 7 and within days the Israeli response. Work at the site ended. Its fate is unknown.

As long as the siege, or blockade, of Gaza has been in place Israel has had the policy of what it has described as “mowing the lawn” whenever resistance mounts, meaning their forces will strike at militants wherever their intelligence agencies can locate them, or believe they have located them. But the October Hamas attack, in Israel’s eyes, justified not another “mowing of the lawn” but what could only be described as a scorched earth campaign, a sweep from north to south that would spare little to nothing of the life of the Strip, past or present, and what one could argue, its future.  

Homicide is a term, or concept, well-known in a multitude of languages, along with all of the dark associations that accompany it. From that we have acquired matricide, patricide, and a handful of other variations. In 1948 the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, in response to the Nazi atrocities of the Second World War, added to the list by coining the term genocide to define the elimination of a people, “in whole or in part.” But what we don’t have is a word to describe the eradication of not only a people and their physical existence but their entire history, culture, and heritage, and with it their presence on the land they long inhabited. Wars on such a magnitude raise a question has to be asked—which is a greater crime, or can crimes on such a scale even be measured?

The prophets Amos and Zephariah predicted that one day Gaza would be deserted. But they never envisioned that first its history would be erased from the Earth, and with it a profound chapter of human history.

Christopher Thornton teaches in the Department of American Literature and Culture at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. He has also taught at Emerson College and MIT in the Boston area, at the American University in Cairo, and at the European Institute for International Communication in the Netherlands. A book-length travelogue he wrote about Iran (Descendants of Cyrus: Travels Through Everyday Iran) was recently published by Potomac Books.

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