We need to situate these evacuations within the broader context of the ongoing blockade of Gaza—a complex architectural and technological project of occupation carried out from a distance. Furthermore, we must contextualize the blockade within the broader settler colonial project, initiated first by the British mandate and later continued by the Israeli occupation. The primary aim has been, and continues to be, gaining access to territory in which Palestinians are viewed as surplus population on land that is desired. For instance, when examining repeated patterns of violence and the instruments and protocols of evacuation, we identified Israel’s use of a grid that divideding Gaza into 632 geographical blocks, subject to evacuation orders. Remarkably, this evacuation grid was originally drawn up by Israeli authorities half a century ago as part of a plan to rebuild Gaza under Israeli occupation in the early 1970s. Although supposedly a tool to help Palestinians avoid dangerous areas, a version of this map was used in the first weeks of the latest conflict as a decision-making tool for IDF commanders and planners before launching airstrikes and ground maneuvers. Thus, the evacuation grid continues to follow its original purpose as a military tool, despite the IDF supposedly repackaging it as a humanitarian tool.

Our research on evacuation began with an analysis of the instruments, communication protocols, and events in the areas where people were instructed to evacuate from and to. This approach builds on the extensive research conducted by Forensic Architecture on the systematic violence on Palestinians by the Israeli occupation. We have investigated the massacres in the 1948 Nakba, the more than 2,000 civilians killed in the 2014 military offensive of Gaza, the extrajudicial killings of journalists and activists like Shereen Abu Akleh or Ahmad Erekat, the eviction and forced displacement of families in Jerusalem, among many other cases of violence on Palestinians that contribute to inform our current analysis.

Cartography serves as a tool of domination, for whoever holds the power to represent a territory also wields the power to dominate it. When we refer to cartographic terror, we’re highlighting one aspect of this domination. For instance, the Israeli military published at least four different borders for the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone between October and February, 2023. These borders were adjusted according to military or communication advantages, leading to confusion among the evacuating population about where to go. Another example is the inconsistency between the orders given by the IDF and the evacuation grid’s mapped boundaries. On nine occasions, we observed leaflets or official Facebook posts issuing contradictory orders, such as marking parts of the grid that intersected with the designated area or providing textual information that differed from what was depicted in the drawing. Thus, when we discuss cartographic terror, we’re not only addressing the unequal means of representing contested territory — which is colonization — but also the repeated manipulation of this representation, resulting in confusion.

Yes, exactly.

There are two important aspects of communication to highlight: the tone, as you said, and the control over who can communicate. Firstly, communication is unidirectional, meaning that the Israeli army selects the channels, terms, and timing of communication, disseminating evacuation orders without allowing any response, questions, or clarifications. This lack of response is significant because it further instills the feeling that there is nowhere safe to go. Additionally, the sinister personification of evil, as you put it, conveyed by the personal or casual tone of these messages is particularly hard on the population of Gaza. Despite the blockade and isolation of the last two decades, Palestinians inside Gaza had minimal interaction with the Israeli army. Since 2005, there have been no checkpoints or army patrols on the streets. Some of Gaza’s young people have never even encountered the Israeli army, despite being bombed by them on several occasions. Thus, personification serves as a strategy for the Israeli army to insert itself and assert control over imaginaries that had been developed without its presence. This not only creates spatial entrapment but also an embodied one, a psychological one.

I think we are witnessing an involuntary harvesting of biometric data, yes. This marks a significant shift from the previous situation in Gaza where there were no checkpoints. Since Palestinians were forced to move by the evacuation orders, they had no choice but to submit to biometric checkpoints — refusal would mean being unable to access the supposedly safe areas.

I think it’s crucial to understand how the settler colonial project aims to transform the Palestinian population into a surplus, as the primary goal is to acquire territory rather than to integrate the people inhabiting it. Within this framework, there’s a process of racialization that portrays Palestinians as the ‘Other’ and a threat to land access. These processes, which reconfigure civilians initially as a threat and then as surplus, inevitably lead to the development of legal, political, and spatial mechanisms to control and contain the population. They also form the basis for the differentiation in value between the lives of the occupiers and the occupied, which then manifests in the disproportionate exchange of Israeli lives for Palestinian lives, as well as in the repeated displacement of the population to uninhabitable areas. It is also, of course, evident in the ethical indifference of Western powers to the genocide.

I think the reality is that this is a war on Palestinians, not Hamas. We see this in the destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure, like hospitals and aid warehouses, and in the weaponization of humanitarian principles. In our analysis of evacuation orders, we superimposed different layers of information: evacuation orders, advances of the Israeli ground invasion, and satellite imagery of destruction. This superimposition allowed us to observe two patterns: the coincidence of evacuation orders with the advancement of the ground invasion, and the repeated displacement of the population towards areas with no infrastructure, or as we are seeing now in the expulsion from Rafah, to areas where the army has destroyed the functioning infrastructure. And the war against civilians goes further than attacking physical infrastructure — the army is also targeting social infrastructures.

Hundreds of health workers were killed, mostly in October and November of 2023, as they returned home after their shifts in hospitals. Towards the beginning of the new year, officials and policemen in charge of humanitarian aid were bombed as they drove to meet trucks arriving at distribution points. Journalists reporting on the atrocities have been silenced along with their families under the rubble, as have the teachers and university professors coordinating the shelters in schools and university courtyards. This pattern, which targets members of the community who are essential for the sustainment of life amid the ruins, suggests a calculated destruction of Palestinian society.

Yes. And, importantly, the Israeli army claims this is all the collateral damage of its war against Hamas. Collateral damage is problematic because it assumes that killing a determinate number of civilians is reasonable for justified scenarios — basically it allows military strategy to be explained as fitting within the parameters of International Humanitarian Law. An added layer of complication that we’ve seen with this conflict so far is the use of AI systems in military decision-making, which amounts to the automation of collateral damage. The military is essentially imparting a death drive onto machines. But what are the limits of that death drive? The logic of collateral damage has always allowed Israel to shift the debate to one of proportionality and simultaneously recast the whole population as a potential target. AI targeting systems are even more problematic because collateral damage is embedded in their decision-making from the start and thus ceases to be questioned.

Yes, exactly. Ultimately, this is a war of the short term and the long term — one that is not only being waged using conventional methods against Hamas, but against the entire Palestinian population. We must continue evaluating the Israeli state’s use of architectural violence and psychological violence in order to understand how it seeks to destroy territorial claims, society, and culture. These are methods of war and colonial control that will have significant lasting effects well after the physical violence ceases.