The unspoken Right of Return
Since 1948, the majority of Gaza’s population has lived as refugees, cut off from their ancestral towns and villages. Today, over 75% of Gazans are refugees, and half of them are children, many displaced from places that remain uninhabited within Israeli territory. Gaza Travel Agency transforms this suppressed history into an imaginative but plausible future. Inspired by historian Dr. Salman Abu Sitta’s practical plans for repatriation, it invites visitors to step into an imaginary travel agency, where routes, destinations, and emotions of return can be explored. Rather than debate, the installation creates space to visualize the simple, human act of “taking a bus home,” shifting the narrative from impossibility and despair toward hope, belonging, and peace.
Return as the Only Humane and Sustainable Possibility
The Right of Return for Palestinian refugees is enshrined in international law and reaffirmed by multiple UN resolutions, yet it is consistently dismissed in political discourse. Instead, attention has been absorbed by frameworks like the “two-state solution”, which ignores the core injustice of displacement, or by proposals that amount to further ethnic cleansing — the reality unfolding in Gaza today. Gaza Travel Agency is part of a broader movement that asserts return as the only humane, legal, and sustainable solution. By placing this vision in a public design forum, the project contributes to normalizing the discourse around return, ensuring it is recognized not as a threat or impossibility, but as the basis for justice and coexistence.
A Collective Effort Through Design
Gaza Travel Agency has been created by a collective of volunteers with Palestinian, Jewish, and diverse international backgrounds, united by the campaign Bring Gaza Home. The project is coordinated by Design Reparations, a community of designers working in solidarity with Indigenous-led and displaced communities worldwide. All of the work for this installation has been done voluntarily, with people contributing time, knowledge, and creativity across borders. What connects us is the belief that design can illuminate suppressed narratives, challenge systems of erasure, and create space for justice and dignity. By mobilizing design in this way, we aim to stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza and contribute to broader struggles for liberation and decolonization.
