In two years of almost incessant bombing, Israeli forces have killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, at least a third of whom are children. The human toll has been called genocide by human rights organizations around the world and by a United Nations commission, but a new report from an Israeli research center highlights the environmental devastation: Gaza’s soil is polluted after the destruction of sewage treatment plants, sewage contamination is widespread, and particles left behind by exploding bombs increase disease rates respiratory.
According to a new report from the Arava Institute, an environmental research institute based in Israel, Gaza is covered in approximately 61 million tons of rubble, much of which contains asbestos, unexploded ordnance and unburied human remains. “The environmental situation in Gaza before October 7 was a disaster,” said Tareq Abuhamed, who heads the Arava Institute and is Palestinian. Rebuilding even back to this earlier state of disaster will likely take decades.
A United Nations report, released in late September, estimates that nearly $70 billion in damage has been caused to Gaza’s roads, buildings and infrastructure over the past two years, while more than 80 percent of cultivated land has been destroyed. Less than 10 percent of all hazardous waste is disposed of safely and most, of necessity, are burned or piled in open dumps. Untreated wastewater, on the other hand, is discharged directly onto land or into the sea.
“Waste becomes mountains, and mountains are a breeding ground for mosquitoes and rodents that spread malaria,” said Yasser El-Nahhal, an environmental chemist and ecotoxicologist at the Islamic University of Gaza.
Long before the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Israeli blockades prevented easy access to water, electricity and food. Recurring power outages have been common in Palestine for 20 years, and many residents rely on small-scale desalination units, factories that make seawater drinkable, and private tankers to purchase drinking water. Today, the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders says that only one in ten water import requests is approved by Israeli authorities.
” The environment [was] destroyed before the war,” El-Nahhal said. “But since the war, it has been destroyed many times beyond imagination.”
Palestinian researcher Mazin Qumsiyeh of the Palestinian Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University calls what is happening now ecocide: a term broadly defined as the serious, long-term and widespread destruction of the environment. A growing coalition of countries hopes to legally define ecocide as a crime that the International Criminal Court could prosecute.
Israeli campaign in Gaza fuels demands to make ‘ecocide’ an international crime
“Gaza, of course, was a functioning society, even though it was subject to significant sanctions over the past 16 years that limited supplies,” Qumsiyeh said. “They had a functioning society. They had schools, universities, sewage treatment facilities and a desalination plant. All of that was destroyed in this genocidal, ecocidal war.”
Earlier this month, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the world’s largest conservation congress, signed a resolution saying ecocide should be treated as a criminal offense. Jojo Mehta, founder of the legal advocacy group Stop Ecocide International, said that while the resolution defines ecocide quite broadly, it could certainly apply to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. “What is happening in terms of the environment in Gaza is horrible,” Mehta said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind that this is ecocide.”
Israeli officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
The Arava report calls for unfettered aid to Gaza, as well as clean water systems and personal hygiene kits to mitigate disease. The United Nations, in its September report, wrote that making Gaza’s environment livable again “will require a cessation of hostilities. The first phase of recovery will focus on saving lives, through the restoration of essential services and the removal of debris.”
Nonetheless, Qumsiyeh of Bethlehem University said the Palestinians will continue to rebuild – even if, as he believes is likely, the current ceasefire collapses. “I’m not pretending we have a huge success rate,” he said, “but imagine your community being destroyed dozens of times and you continue to rebuild. That shows incredible hope.”
