Project by Mika Yassur
In January, 2009, Israeli forces bombed houses and a United Nations school in Beit Lahya, Gaza. At least two children and six elderly people were killed in the attack and another dozen wounded by white phosphorus bombs. Forensic Architecture investigated these incidents, mapping “tentacles” of white clouds drifting towards the earth, burning everything they came into contact with. While Israel maintained it had used white phosphorus as a “smoke screen” “in compliance with international law,” FA determined that, based on the height of shelling, Israel had in fact used it to terrorize civilians and clear out these neighborhoods. In May, 2009 three researchers from Al Azhar University, Gaza, investigated the occurrence of phosphorus in the soil, collecting 23 samples. The researchers categorized three soil types: loam, sandy loam, and sand, noting that phosphorus preferentially binds to finer materials, like clay and silt, staying in suspension longer in these cases in contrast to coarser sand—which will also have a lower phosphorus content. Many of the sites tested, however, contained dangerously high phosphorus concentrations—destroying the natural ecosystem in agricultural sites and posing health risks in urban areas. The particle size and soil content have a direct impact on levels of toxicity suspended in the land in Gaza—a densely populated strip of land inundated with chemical violence by Israel through herbicide spraying, chemical warfare, and infrastructural violence—releasing sewage, asbestos, and tons of rubble into the earth. Sand dunes in Gaza are a site of ongoing political geo-reformation and contestation. As I plot throughout this atlas, soil distribution throughout the strip is both a site of violence on a granular level and is manipulated through state mechanisms of environmental management and spatial control.
