Development as Erasure: Palestine, Genocide and ‘Reconstruction’

Abstract

This article examines the destruction of Gaza since October 2023 as part of a longer settler-colonial project in which war, reconstruction and development are inseparably linked. Far from a rupture, the devastation exemplifies a historical continuum of erasure, from the Nakba of 1948 to contemporary schemes such as ‘Gaza 2035’, which envision the territory as a depopulated investment frontier for energy, logistics and speculative urbanism. Situating Palestine within comparative settler-colonial scholarship, the article highlights how development and humanitarian discourses function as technologies of control, embedding dispossession within fiscal regimes, aid dependency and infrastructural planning. Tracing these dynamics through the Oslo Accords, donor interventions and regional economic normalization, it shows how neoliberal frameworks have transformed reconstruction into an extension of war by other means. In this system, Israel emerges not only as militarily dominant but also as economically indispensable, its occupation sustained through global markets, supply chains and international complicity.