Ruins typically mark the endpoint of historical stories, regarded as objects worthy of attention only for the bygone times they represent. But what might a history reveal if it took ruins as its departure point? How would a history of ruins look? This article aims to write ruins into history by pondering the case of Gaza in the aftermath of World War I. The ruins of the city, it is argued here, were the site of a transformation in the modalities of urban change: what had been a ubiquitous and organic process of evolution in the cityscapes of the Middle East up to the late nineteenth century was replaced by top-down spatial convention, imposed by the modern state. This transformation deprived ruins from their long-standing role as essential elements of the urban landscape and flattened them into mere emblems of cultural decay. Consistent with the ontological stance of the progress/decline binary, by the early twentieth century, spatial ruination had become regarded as a unidirectional rather than multidirectional process. This modern framing of ruins proved especially significant for postwar Gaza, whose reconstruction efforts were consequently plagued by internal contradiction.

中文翻译：

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迈向巴勒斯坦废墟历史：两次世界大战期间的加沙

废墟通常标志着历史故事的终点，被视为仅在它们所代表的过去时代才值得关注的对象。但是，如果历史以废墟为起点，它会揭示什么？废墟的历史会是什么样子？本文旨在通过思考第一次世界大战后加沙的情况，将废墟写入历史。这里认为，城市废墟是城市变革模式转变的场所：曾经是直到 19 世纪晚期，中东城市景观中无处不在的有机演变过程被现代国家强加的自上而下的空间惯例所取代。这种转变剥夺了废墟作为城市景观基本要素的长期作用，并将它们夷为平地，成为文化衰败的象征。与进步/衰退二元论的本体论立场一致，到 20 世纪初，空间破坏已被视为单向而非多向过程。事实证明，这种现代废墟框架对战后加沙尤为重要，其重建工作因此受到内部矛盾的困扰。