09 ISSUE IV
MARCH 2025
MARCH 2025
Decolonizing Gaza
How the work of Palestinian artists engages with memory, place, and exile, reinforcing the deeply personal yet political
dimensions of Palestinian identity.
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dimensions of Palestinian identity.
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By Atash Nowroozian
Israel’s prolonged assault on Gaza represents one of the most enduring crises in modern history, driven by structural violence, political manipulation by the West, and obscured by Israel and the US hiding behind legal ambiguities. The war has rendered Gaza unlivable, exemplifying global complicity in settler-colonial oppression. Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé have described Gaza as a “prison camp,” where siege, militarized aggression, and infrastructure destruction are normalized under the guise of security. The Palestinian Edward Said has shown how branding Palestinians as terrorists, rationalizes the collective punishment of Palestinians under the pretext of security. Media and policy discourse, in turn, reinforce this framing by presenting Israel as a modern democracy defending itself against an uncivilized “other.”
Of all the approaches to understanding how Palestinians are demonized by discourse, Said’s “Orientalism” framework is often put forward. While useful, Said’s work does not fully account for the material structures of settler-colonialism. I want to suggest that a combination of Said’s framework with decolonial thought, accounts better for how international law and policy sustain Israel’s domination. The siege of Gaza, imposed in 2007 following Hamas’s electoral victory, represents a defining chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The blockade restricts the movement of goods and people, devastates infrastructure, and creates a continuous humanitarian crisis. Despite Israel’s 2005 withdrawal of settlers from Gaza, it continues to control Gaza’s air, land, and sea access, while limiting access to resources such as water and electricity, often using them as leverage. The siege is further reinforced by military operations, like Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), which killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and left Gaza’s infrastructure in ruins.
Political speeches, media reports, and policy documents frequently depict Gaza as an inherently violent space, a “breeding ground for terrorists,” legitimizing the blockade as a necessary security measure. Policy documents often frame Hamas’s actions as the sole justification for the blockade while ignoring Israel’s disproportionate and systemic use of violence. Fast forward to October 7, 2023. According to Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, “Israelis told themselves that all Gazans were Hamas, children included, even the infants, and that after October 7 everyone was getting just what they deserved.” Western media exacerbates this erasure by focusing on Hamas’s actions while ignoring the broader population’s lived experiences. Outlets such as The New York Times and BBC frequently emphasize Israel’s “right to self-defense”, using headlines like “Hamas Rockets Target Israeli Civilians” and “Israel Retaliates in Gaza”, to obscure the broader context of occupation and violence. This portrayal not only rationalizes the blockade but also fosters global indifference, reducing Palestinians to abstract statistics rather than a population enduring systemic oppression. By contrast, media from the Middle East and Global South, like Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye, focus on the humanitarian impact on Gazans, using “collective punishment” and “siege” to expose the realities on the ground.
International law reinforces this asymmetry by treating Palestinians as perpetual dependents requiring external control. This construct sustains policies that justify occupation and foreign intervention under the guise of maintaining order. This legal framing legitimizes Israel’s disproportionate violence while absolving international actors of responsibility. Orientalist assumptions also shape international policy responses to Gaza: U.N. Resolutions, U.S. policy statements, and Israeli government rhetoric consistently justify using a counterterrorist approach. International law plays a dual role: both a tool for accountability and a mechanism of domination. Israel strategically invokes the “laws of war” to legitimize its actions while masking the policy’s settler-colonial underpinnings. For instance, Israel frequently cites Article 51 of the U.N. Charter to justify military operations, disregarding the prohibition of collective punishment under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The effect of legal frameworks centered on state sovereignty often marginalizes non-state actors and colonized populations like Palestinian communities in Gaza. This framing sustains inaction by positioning Palestinians as passive recipients of humanitarian aid rather than political agents.
What would a decolonial perspective or lens offer? Not only a critique of colonial legacies but it would also actively confront the mechanisms of settler-colonial domination including land dispossession, economic dependency, and military structures in Gaza.
Indian-born Marxist philosopher Aijaz Ahmad, in his book IN THEORY: CLASSES, NATIONS, LITERATURES, critiques Said’s emphasis on cultural representation over the political and material structures for lacking a concrete analysis of the systems of economic exploitation and political control that sustain imperialism. Ahmad argues that “the critique of colonialism must include its material bases—trade, conquest, administration, and exploitation—none of which can be fully grasped through cultural analysis alone.” This critique is particularly relevant to Gaza, where oppression is sustained not only through narratives but also through military occupation, economic deprivation, and legal complicity.
Dismantling Orientalist narratives about Gaza requires shifting from abstract portrayals of violence to amplifying Palestinian voices and lived experiences. Said argues that “the struggle for Palestine is a struggle over interpretation and narrative… the problem is how to get the message across in a world in which Palestine does not exist.” Alternative media, Palestinian-led advocacy, and cultural production would challenge this erasure by centering stories of resilience, sovereignty, and resistance. These counter-narratives disrupt the framing of Gaza as an inherently violent space and instead highlight the structural forces of occupation and settler-colonial control. Derek Gregory notes that the “colonial present” is not a relic of the past but an ongoing process that secures the subordination of colonized peoples.
Palestinian artists and writers, like Mahmoud Darwish and Mona Hatoum, have created work that serves as a powerful counter to Western portrayals of Gaza and Palestinians, which often reinforce Orientalist stereotypes and depict them as helpless. In his poem “State of Siege,” Darwish writes: “The siege will persist until we teach our enemies models of our finest poetry.” He positions art as a form of resistance, demanding global recognition for Palestinian culture. In her video work, “Measures of Distance,” Hatoum juxtaposes letters from her mother exiled in Beirut with fragmented family images, capturing the emotional weight of displacement and occupation. The tension between voice and image represents both personal and collective loss, while the inclusion of Arabic—often othered in Western contexts—reclaims Palestinian narratives. Hatoum has emphasized that her work engages with memory, place, and exile, reinforcing the deeply personal yet political dimensions of Palestinian identity.
ATASH NOWROOZIAN is completing an MA in International Affairs at The New School.