Gaza

Territorial Entrapment and the Geopolitics of Erasure

The Gaza Strip is not merely a site of conflict; it is a space produced through the intersection of geopolitics, settler-colonial expansion, and the violent reconfiguration of territory. As of 2025, Gaza remains the world’s most surveilled and restricted zone, an area where sovereignty is fragmented, territorial control is selectively applied, and the politics of space dictate life and death. The most recent escalations post-October 2023 have left Gaza in a state of near-total devastation, with over 46,000 Palestinians killed, more than 110,000 injured, and over 80% of the enclave’s buildings damaged or destroyed (UN OCHA, 2025). The destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure is not collateral—it is a strategic form of urbicide, a spatially targeted effort to dismantle the material foundations of Palestinian existence.

Rather than seeing Gaza as an anomaly, it must be understood as part of a larger global system of territorial entrapment, where states manipulate borders, sovereignty, and international law to sustain domination. The enclave’s siege, bombardment, and political erasure reflect the ways in which spatial control, economic dependency, and military power intersect to shape contemporary geopolitics. By situating Gaza within critical geopolitics, this essay moves beyond state-centric narratives to analyze how space is weaponized as a geopolitical instrument.

‘Territorial Trap’

John Agnew’s "territorial trap" (1994) critiques the assumption that states are neatly bounded entities exercising full sovereignty within their borders. Gaza exemplifies this contradiction: Israel claims it no longer occupies Gaza, yet it retains total control over its airspace, maritime zones, border crossings, and essential resources. The enclave is governed through a model of "unbounded territoriality" (Hughes, 2020), where sovereignty is flexible, borders are weaponized, and Palestinians remain trapped in an indefinite state of statelessness.

The Gaza blockade, imposed since 2007, has functioned not only as an economic stranglehold but as a territorial mechanism to engineer de-development (Roy, 2016). By 2025, 97% of Gaza’s water is undrinkable, the healthcare system has collapsed, and hunger has reached catastrophic levels, with over 1.3 million people facing famine conditions (IPC, 2025). The destruction of Gaza’s hospitals, universities, and power grids is not merely a byproduct of war but part of a spatially calibrated project to ensure Palestinian dependence, displacement, and de-sovereignization.

Urbicide & Geopolitics of Destruction

Gaza is not just being bombed; it is being systematically erased. The destruction of its housing, infrastructure, and cultural landmarks aligns with what Stephen Graham (2004) and Eyal Weizman (2007) term urbicide—the strategic targeting of cities to dismantle their social and political functions. As of April 2025, satellite imagery confirms that over 65% of Gaza’s built environment has been leveled, including hospitals, universities, and heritage sites (UNOSAT, 2025). These attacks are not incidental; they are meant to break the very possibility of Palestinian urban life.

A key feature of urbicide is the temporal aspect of destruction. Every few years, Gaza is bombed, rebuilt, and then bombed again—a cyclical process that prevents long-term economic development and political stability. This ensures that Palestinians in Gaza remain in a state of permanent precarity, never able to establish sovereign urban governance or develop independent infrastructure. As Weizman (2012) has argued, the targeting of roads, water systems, and electric grids turns cities into non-functional spaces, ensuring that even when buildings stand, life remains impossible.

Selective Sovereignty & Double Standard of International Law

The geopolitics of law enforcement further entraps Gaza in an asymmetric regime of power. While Israel’s actions—mass displacement, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and enforced starvation—meet the criteria for genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention, global institutions have failed to act. In contrast, Western powers have justified military interventions in Ukraine, Libya, and Iraq under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework, but remain complicit in Gaza’s destruction. This reveals what Agnew (2003) calls the geopolitical imagination—how international legal norms are selectively applied to sustain global power hierarchies.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling in early 2024, which found plausible evidence of genocidal actions in Gaza, has been largely ignored by the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations Security Council. Meanwhile, military aid to Israel has continued uninterrupted, with over $18 billion in arms sales from the US alone in 2024 (SIPRI, 2025). The contradiction is stark: states that claim to uphold international law have instead reinforced Gaza’s entrapment.

Gaza in Global Geopolitics: What’s Next?

Gaza is not just a Palestinian issue—it is a global geopolitical test case. If left unchallenged, Gaza’s model of territorial entrapment will set dangerous precedents for future conflicts, where states can manipulate borders, sovereignty, and legal frameworks to justify long-term military occupations.

1. Sovereignty Reimagined: The case of Gaza forces a rethinking of what sovereignty means in the 21st century. If Israel claims Gaza is not occupied, why does it control its borders? The concept of unbounded territoriality must be formally recognized in international law to prevent indefinite statelessness.

2. Ending Urbicide: Global institutions must develop legal and political frameworks to recognize urbicide as a war crime. The destruction of civilian infrastructure must not be normalized as part of counterinsurgency doctrine.

3. Geopolitical Accountability: Selective enforcement of international law undermines global governance. If Gaza’s destruction is ignored, it will erode the credibility of human rights norms worldwide. Sanctions, arms embargoes, and criminal prosecutions must be pursued with the same urgency applied elsewhere.

Final Thought

Gaza as a Geopolitical Warning

Gaza is not just a humanitarian crisis; it is a litmus test for the legitimacy of international law, the accountability of global institutions, and the future of territorial sovereignty. If Gaza falls completely into ruin, it will mark a permanent shift in how settler-colonial states manipulate space, law, and security to entrench power.

The world’s response to Gaza will not only define the region’s future—it will determine whether territorial erasure, urbicide, and siege warfare become normalized practices of statecraft in the 21st century.

Sources:

Agnew, J. (1994). The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory.
Graham, S. (2004). Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism.
Hughes, R. (2020). Unbounded Territoriality: Sovereignty and Space in Israel/Palestine.
Ó Tuathail, G. (1996). Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space.
Weizman, E. (2007). Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation.
Nur Masalha (2018) "Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History", Zed Books.
Rashid Khalidi (2021) "Hundred Years' War on Palestine", Metropolitan Books.