Zionist Ecocide in Palestine
Uprooted olive trees in the occupied West Bank. The destruction of olive groves – a pillar of Palestinian culture and sustenance – has become routine under ‘Israeli’ occupation.
Today, on Earth Day, we find little cause for celebration in Palestine. Instead of green growth, we witness ecocide – the deliberate destruction of the natural environment – as a weapon of war. Under the Zionist occupation, the lands of Palestine, especially in Gaza, are being systematically ravaged: ancient olive groves burned, native forests uprooted, water wells cemented shut, and farms reduced to barren soil. These are not accidental by-products of conflict; they are central tactics in a settler-colonial and genocidal project aimed at erasing an indigenous people. According to the International Criminal Court’s definition, attacks causing “wide, long-term and serious damage” to the environment in war are criminal(Middle East Monitor). ‘Israel’s’ assault on Palestine’s ecology meets this definition: it is a war on nature itself, entwined with the war on the Palestinian people (Forensic Architecture). We, a coalition of Palestinian and international environmental justice advocates, write to expose this deliberate ecocide and demand action to stop it.
Colonialism’s War on the Land
From the very beginning, Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine has targeted the land and environment as much as the people. The founding myth that Israel “made the desert bloom” hides a bitter reality: for decades Israel has brutally disfigured Palestine’s environment (Middle East Monitor). In the Nakba of 1948, not only were 500 Palestinian villages wiped off the map, but their surrounding orchards and fields were often razed. Native trees – olives, oaks, carobs, figs – that had flourished for centuries were systematically uprooted and replaced with European pine trees (Science For The People). The Jewish National Fund’s relentless afforestation campaigns blanketed the ruins of depopulated villages with fast-growing non-native pines, “concealing what is underneath them.” As one Palestinian journalist notes, millions of these imported trees were planted to literally cover up the remnants of over 800 destroyed villages – an attempt to erase Palestine’s people by erasing traces of their presence on the land (Forge Organizing). These pines (often misrepresented as benign forestation) have in fact reduced biodiversity and disrupted local ecosystems (Science For The People). They are so poorly suited to Palestine’s climate that they’ve turned the hills into tinderboxes: extremely flammable monocultures that have caused rampant wildfires (Forge Organizing). This “green” veneer of colonialism – what some call “green Zionism” – masks an environmental catastrophe for native flora and fauna, all in service of staking colonial claim.
The war on nature has only intensified in the West Bank and Gaza over the decades. ‘Israeli’ occupying forces and settlers regularly carry out assaults on Palestinian land that amount to ecological warfare. Some examples of this environmental destruction include:
Burning and bulldozing of olive groves: ‘Israeli’ settlers and soldiers routinely torch Palestinian olive orchards and uproot trees en masse. In one incident, 450 olive trees were destroyed in a single week by army bulldozers (Middle East Monitor). Uprooting and burning olive trees – some of them centuries old – is a tactic explicitly aimed at forcing Palestinian farmers off their land (MEE). Since 1967, over 800,000 olive trees have been torn up by ‘Israeli’ authorities and settlers, wiping out livelihoods and heritage(New Yorker).
Uprooting native vegetation and planting invasive species: Indigenous trees that once blanketed Palestine have been removed and often replaced with invasive pines/cedars that don’t belong in this ecosystem (SFTP). These foreign trees acidify the soil and choke out native plant life, fundamentally altering the landscape. The result is a biological homogenization – a deliberate undoing of the delicate, diverse ecology that Palestinian farmers nurtured for generations.
Destruction and theft of water resources: Access to water has been weaponized. ‘Israeli’ forces have poured concrete into Palestinian wells and springs, literally sealing them off, to deny villages irrigation and drinking water (MEE). Ever since occupying the West Bank in 1967, ‘Israel’ has imposed a regime of “water apartheid,” seizing control of aquifers and preventing Palestinians from developing water infrastructure (MEE). In Gaza, repeated bombings of sewage plants and water facilities – and the recent practice of flooding tunnels with seawater – have contaminated precious groundwater. The occupation’s aim is clear: make Palestinians thirsty enough to leave.
Clearing and cementing farmlands: Vast swaths of Palestinian agricultural land have been bulldozed to make way for Israeli settlements, walls, and “buffer zones.” In Gaza, during the ongoing assault since October 2023, ‘Israel’ has eliminated up to 80% of the Strip’s agricultural lands – either by direct bulldozing or by declaring them off-limits behind a military buffer boundary (Palestine Chronicle). In late 2024, a rights group reported ‘Israeli’ forces leveled 500 dunams of newly replanted farmland in northern Gaza in one operation, pulverizing fields meant to feed local communities (Plestine Chronicle). The few remaining farmers are left with sand and rubble where once citrus and vegetables grew.
Pollution and poisoning of ecosystems: The military onslaughts themselves inflict toxic devastation. ‘Israel’s’ bombardment of Gaza has littered the soil with hazardous munitions residues, from depleted uranium to white phosphorus. In the first months of the 2023 war, 70,000 tons of explosives were dropped on Gaza, including banned white phosphorus that leached into soil and water (MEE). Along Gaza’s perimeter, ‘Israeli’ airplanes have also sprayed herbicides over Palestinian farmlands for years, a form of chemical warfare to kill crops (Forensic Achitecture). The environmental toll is severe: soils scorched and polluted, air thick with carcinogens, and coastal waters tainted – a comprehensive assault on the foundations of life.
Each of these acts is an attack on the Palestinian people’s ability to live freely on their land. By burning trees, drying springs, and leveling earth, the occupation isn’t just committing property damage – it is destroying the ecological basis of an entire society. This ecocide is intrinsic to the settler-colonial logic: to replace one people with another, the colonizer must also remake the land itself, often by first laying it waste. A sterile colony of pine trees where a vibrant olive grove once stood; a dust bowl where villages once farmed – this is the landscape of Zionist conquest.
Food, Water, and Identity Under Attack
The environmental devastation has dire consequences for Palestinian life, identity, and food sovereignty. Consider the olive tree, a cultural symbol as well as a cornerstone of the economy. Olives and olive oil are lifelines for Palestinians: olive farming supports over 100,000 Palestinian families and accounts for roughly 25% of all agricultural income in the occupied territories (Action Aid). Families hand down olive groves through generations; harvesting is a community ritual that ties people to their ancestral land. To tear out an olive tree by its roots is to tear at the fabric of Palestinian society. “Our olive trees are like our children,” many farmers say – they require years of care and in return sustain entire communities. ‘Israel’ knows this. That’s why, as one Palestinian farmer testified, settlers have resorted even to drilling into trunks and injecting poison to kill ancient olive trees(MEE). Killing a tree kills a way of life. The result of these attacks? A drastic drop in olive production, loss of income, and the trauma of seeing one’s heritage hacked to the ground.
Food security in Gaza and the West Bank has reached a crisis as a result of this ecocidal policy. In Gaza, which was once verdant with date palms, olive orchards, and subsistence farms, the landscape after continuous bombardment and razing is apocalyptic. Satellite analysis revealed that by early 2024 nearly half of Gaza’s trees had been destroyed and its once-fertile farms turned to craterstheguardian.com. Nearly 75% of all olive trees in Gaza have been obliterated in the ongoing onslaught (PC). This is catastrophic in a place where even under siege, farmers tried to maintain greenhouses and orchards to feed the population. An agronomist in Gaza described the scene after Israeli bulldozers plowed through:** “There are no traces of life in what used to be our orchard – just broken land”**. Such destruction directly fuels the humanitarian crisis: with crops wiped out and fishing restricted by naval blockade, over 80% of Gaza’s population is now food-insecure, reliant on dwindling aid. Starvation isn’t a side effect – it’s deployed as a weapon. Indeed, Israeli officials have openly spoken of “putting the Palestinians on a diet,” and the destruction of farms ensures dependence and desperation. Ecocide here is a means to force surrender: if people cannot eat, cannot drink clean water, cannot breathe clean air, how can they survive or resist?
Water, too, is life – and its deprivation is being used to squeeze Palestinians. In the West Bank’s Jordan Valley (the breadbasket of Palestine), ‘Israeli’ settlers and army have seized most freshwater springs and pump a vast share of the groundwater, leaving Palestinian farmers literally high and dry. Wells built by generations past are fenced off or filled in. When soldiers fill a well with concrete, as happened to dozens of wells around Hebron, they send a brutal message: leave, or you won’t even have water to drink (MEE). The Gaza Strip, isolated and densely populated, has suffered an even more extreme water crisis. ‘Israeli’ bombing has wrecked sewage plants and destroyed desalination facilities. The aquifer under Gaza is overdrawn and polluted – on the brink of irreversible damage. Now 97% of Gaza’s water is unfit for human consumption, and children fall ill from what comes out of the taps. Environmental destruction has interlocked with economic siege to produce medieval conditions: no clean water, failing crops, livestock dead from thirst. This is deliberate. By making the environment unlivable, the occupation hopes to achieve what bombs and bullets alone cannot – the capitulation or exodus of the Palestinian people.
It’s important to understand: these are not isolated incidents or “collateral damage.” They form a pattern of environmental violence stretching back decades, one that has accelerated in recent years. A scientific report published in late 2024 concluded that the devastation of Gaza’s environment “amounts to an ecocide” and will inflict harms that “will impact generations to come.” (Report SSRN). The authors – environmental and health experts – warned that Gaza is being made physically uninhabitable. The same could be said for Palestinian lands under relentless settler attacks in the West Bank. By devastating the resources that Palestinians depend on – food, water, soil, air – the occupier is attempting to erase the Palestinian presence itself. This meets the very definition of genocide: the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about a people’s destruction. The slow death of an olive tree, in this context, is tied to the slow death of a nation’s hopes.
Ecocide as a Tool of Genocide
We must call this what it is: ecocide in the service of genocide. The destruction of Palestine’s environment is not an accidental outcome of war – it is a core tactic of a settler-colonial ideology that seeks to replace one people with another. Zionism’s adherents once boasted of making “a land without a people” bloom; in practice, they have made a blooming land barren by driving out its people. As many have argued, the violence in Palestine has always had an aspect of “memoricide” (erasing cultural memory) and “urbicide” (destroying cities). Now we see clearly that it also entails ecocide – the destruction of the very ecology that sustains Palestinian life. When bulldozers uproot fruit orchards in Gaza or burn wheat fields in the West Bank, they are not only denying Palestinians food in the moment; they are attempting to crush the possibility of resilience, to eliminate the land’s ability to harbor its people. In Gaza, ‘Israeli’ officials explicitly spoke of turning the strip into a “deserted island”. Scorched-earth tactics – the same used by colonial powers through history – are being deployed to fulfill that vision. This is genocidal intent in action: to “desert” the land of its native people by destroying everything that sustains them.
International law has begun to grapple with this horrific intersection of genocide and ecocide. The European Law Institute and environmental lawyers worldwide are pushing to make ecocide an international crime, precisely because armies and regimes have used environmental destruction as a mode of annihilation. Under the Rome Statute (Article 8(2)(b)(iv)), it’s already a war crime to intentionally wreak widespread, long-term damage to the natural environment. But despite voluminous evidence of such crimes in Palestine, the world’s response has been tepid. There is a deafening international silence when Palestinian orchards are set aflame or wells are poisoned. Global leaders who speak passionately about climate change and biodiversity loss say little about the total ecosystem collapse being engineered in Gaza as we speak. This silence is not just hypocritical – it is enabling the destruction. By refusing to hold ‘Israel’ accountable, international institutions are effectively greenlighting the continued ecocide.
All Around The World
Palestine is not alone. Around the world, colonial and imperial forces have long used environmental destruction as a tool of domination – often with genocidal results. The case of Sudan provides a stark parallel. There, an ongoing genocidal conflict has been fueled by the exploitation of gold mines by outside powers. Gold has become the currency of Sudan’s war: it bankrolls the militias and armies committing mass atrocities (Time). The United Arab Emirates – through Dubai’s gold markets – is a chief buyer of this plunder, with Sudan’s gold (much of it extracted from Darfur) accounting for 70% of the country’s exports . This gold rush has come at a horrific human and environmental cost. In Darfur and other regions, armed groups and mercenaries (some linked to the infamous Janjaweed) seized mines and scorched surrounding villages. They use toxic mercury and cyanide to extract gold, poisoning rivers and soil. As one Sudanese activist warned, the pursuit of profit “regardless of the damages” means “future generations will [inherit gold] at the expense of the environment.” (Dabanga Sudan). The land is left polluted and pockmarked with open pits, while indigenous communities are massacred or displaced – a lethal mix of ecocide and genocide. On this Earth Day, as Sudan’s Darfur region again bleeds from renewed ethnic cleansing, let us recognize the role of resource exploitation and environmental ruin in that violence. It is part of the same pattern we see in Palestine: destroy the people by destroying the foundations of life.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, too, the earth itself has been a target and victim of imperial violence. The Congo’s rainforests and mineral-rich earth should sustain one of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems and a large human population. Instead, the D.R. Congo has endured nearly three decades of continuous warfare, with some six million lives lost – the deadliest conflict anywhere since World War II (Genocide Watch). Why? A big part of the answer lies in resource plunder. Eastern Congo’s fertile lands and forests sit atop vast deposits of coltan, gold, diamonds, and rare earth minerals. Foreign corporations and neighboring regimes have backed militias to seize those riches. As Genocide Watch reports, eastern DRC is “plagued by armed militias vying for control over coltan, gold, and rare earths” used in our cellphones and electronics. In the process, forests are stripped and wildlife (like the endangered okapi and mountain gorillas) are slaughtered or driven out. National parks have been turned into mining and logging zones by armed groups. Toxic tailings from mining poison rivers that farming communities rely on. This ecological devastation coincides with immense human suffering: mass killings, sexual violence, child enslavement in the mines – all to feed a global economy’s appetite for minerals. It is no exaggeration to call it an ecocide in the Congo, intertwined with genocide against certain ethnic groups in the conflict zones. The Congolese people and the Congolese environment have both been under assault by the forces of greed and neo-colonial power.
These global parallels reinforce a sobering truth: environmental violence is a hallmark of imperialism. From the Amazon (where indigenous lands are razed for oil and cattle) to West Papua (where mining companies level mountains and suppress local people) – the pattern repeats. Colonizers view native peoples as disposable and the land as something to be exploited or destroyed at will. In each case, the destruction of ecosystems is not just collateral damage; it is actively used to break the resistance and resilience of colonized peoples. In Palestine, Sudan, and Congo, we see that ecocide and genocide are often two sides of the same coin.
Defending the Earth, Defending Life
On this Earth Day, as much of the world touts slogans about “Invest in our planet,” we offer a different rallying cry: Defend the earth by defending indigenous lives, and vice versa. There can be no climate justice or environmental sustainability while governments enable the wanton destruction of entire ecosystems to achieve political domination. The silence of international environmental organizations on Palestine is especially distressing. Where is the outrage from global conservation NGOs about the deliberate burning of ancient olive groves? Where are the climate activists chaining themselves to bulldozers in the West Bank or sounding the alarm about Gaza’s toxic ruination? Too many have treated the Palestinian environment as a political “third rail,” separate from the planetary environment. But Palestinians have long understood that caring for their land is a form of resistance. In fact, Palestinian stewardship and sumud (steadfastness) are a beacon: farmers replant trees each time they are uprooted; communities rebuild greenhouses bombed to bits, refusing to surrender their food sovereignty. Even amidst war, volunteers in Gaza have tried to save what plants and seedlings they can, knowing that re-greening the land is key to survival. As one young climate organizer said recently, “Palestine is in everything. It is the perfect example of how the fight for environmental justice and the justice of its inhabitants are interchangeable.”
We amplify that message. You cannot separate the people from their environment, nor human rights from ecological health. When the bulldozers and bombs fall silent, the scars on the land remain – but so do the seeds of recovery that Palestinians will plant and nurture. It is time for the international community to support this resilience rather than ignore the crimes that threaten to extinguish it. We call on environmentalists everywhere: speak up on Palestine. Treat the ecocide in Gaza and the West Bank with the same urgency as oil spills, wildfires, and Amazon deforestation – because it is all connected. We call on legal bodies to pursue accountability for these crimes: the wanton destruction of wells, crops, and forests must be prosecuted, whether as war crimes, crimes against humanity, or a new crime of ecocide. Countries of conscience should sanction those complicit and end the blockade and bombing that are turning Gaza into a wasteland. On this Earth Day, do not buy into ‘Israel’s’ cynical greenwashing – tree-planting campaigns that hide village graves, solar panels on illegal settlements powering apartheid, nature parks built on stolen land. Instead, amplify the voices of Palestinians who have been caring for this land for centuries and who continue to do so against all odds.
The path to climate justice and decolonization are linked. In honoring the Earth, we must also honor those who protect the Earth by defending their homelands. The Palestinian people’s fight to remain on their land, to replant after each uprooting, to harvest under gunfire, is fundamentally a fight for environmental justice. This Earth Day, as we mark the beauty and fragility of our planet, let us not look away from Gaza’s charred groves and flattened farms. Let us recognize that the soil of Palestine, soaked in toxins and blood, is part of the same Earth we all share. Its liberation from violence and pollution is a global imperative. Our collective organization stands with the Palestinian people in mourning the trees turned to ash and the fields turned to dust – and in commitment to re-growing hope. We demand an end to the ecocide and genocide in Palestine. We urge the world: hold the perpetrators accountable, support the survivors, and help restore the land that was meant to sustain life, not be a tool of death.
On this Earth Day, stand up for Mother Earth in Palestine. Stand up for Gaza’s soil and sky, for the olive branch and the orange blossom. Stand up, because in Palestine the struggle for environmental justice is the struggle for life itself. The Earth will remember where we all stood.
Sources: Middle East Monitor; Forensic Architecture; Verso Books Blog; Abuawad et al., SSRN (2024); Euro-Med Monitor; Science for the People magazine; The Forge (Organizing praxis journal); Time Magazine; Genocide Watch; Genocide Watch; others. (See inline citations for details.)