Ecocide

Before are excerpts from a few of many articles addressing the environmental impacts of the U.S.-enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Briefing: Environmental degradation, climate change and genocide in Gaza

Child Rights International Network, August 19, 2025

The world is witnessing a genocide in Gaza. In addition to the extreme loss of life, restrictions on humanitarian access and forced displacement, Gaza has also suffered devastating environmental degradation and is being impacted by the climate crisis. CRIN’s latest briefing considers the combined impact of Israel’s bombardment since 7 October 2023, environmental degradation and climate change on Gaza’s children, as well as the need for international legal action to address the effects.

More: https://home.crin.org/readlistenwatch/stories/briefing-environmental-degradation-climate-change-genocide-gaza

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Ecocide in Gaza: Israel’s genocide in Gaza will create an unprecedented environmental health crisis

By Noor Badri June 04, 2024
As Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza continues, thousands of Palestinians continue to drown in death and disease. The environmental devastation in Gaza, however, is an often overlooked but critical aspect of the ongoing genocide by Israel on Palestine. The relentless assaults on Gaza have not only caused immense human suffering but have also inflicted severe and lasting damage on the environment, transforming the region into a toxic wasteland. This environmental demolition, referred to as “ecocide,” is a deliberate strategy that compounds the humanitarian crisis and poses a long-term threat to the region’s sustainability and the health of its inhabitants.

Gaza’s environment has been repeatedly subjected to catastrophic damage. Following a 50-day war in 2014, Palestinian environmental engineer Abeer al-Butmeh and her organization PENGON-FoE Palestine discovered that many agricultural areas targeted by Israeli missiles had become infertile (Ali). Their environmental impact assessment revealed degraded air quality with high levels of particulate matter and lead, and significant losses in wildlife populations. Fishermen reported changes in fish availability, indicating a broader ecological disruption (Ali).

Following October 7, the continuing attacks on civilians, infrastructure, and agriculture, have only worsened the environmental crisis. Northern Gaza, which was once two-thirds agricultural land, is now completely decimated. Lush strawberry fields, olive trees, and lemon trees have all been wiped out by the well over 80,000 tons of bombs Israel has dropped on the Gaza strip (Pernot). Moreover, David R. Boyd, the UN special rapporteur for human rights and the environment, noted that Israel’s military operations result in massive carbon pollution, contaminating air, water, and soil with toxic substances. These operations have destroyed Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure, exacerbating the already dire water crisis. Nearly all drinking water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption, and the destruction of desalination plants has left the population dependent on unsafe water sources (Ali).

The environmental impact of war is indiscriminate and far-reaching. Samira Homerang Saunders documents that Gaza’s soil contains radioactive and carcinogenic elements, such as depleted uranium and phosphates, embedded in the rubble reused for reconstruction. The use of white phosphorus by Israeli forces has led to severe environmental and health consequences, with long-term exposure causing respiratory diseases and cancer (Saunders).

More: https://ucghi.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/ecocide-gaza-israels-genocide-gaza-will-create-unprecedented-environmental-health-crisis/

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Gaza Genocide’s Environmental Damage Assessed

By:Lottie Limb, EuroNews 19 June 2024

‘This is like a slow death’: Environmental toll of Gaza war laid bare in first UN assessment

The new assessment from UNEP follows a call from the State of Palestine to take stock of the environmental damage.

Families forced to burn plastic to cook food. Raw sewage spilling onto beaches, and over 107 kilograms of debris for every square metre.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP)’s first assessment of the war in Gaza details the “unprecedented” environmental impacts of Israel’s onslaught over the past eight months.

Published yesterday, the preliminary assessment responds to an official request from the State of Palestine in December last year.

“Not only are the people of Gaza dealing with untold suffering from the ongoing war, the significant and growing environmental damage in Gaza risks locking its people into a painful, long recovery,” says Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director.

More than 37,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to its Health Ministry, after Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 Israelis and took 250 people hostage on 7 October.

“We urgently need a ceasefire to save lives and restore the environment, to enable Palestinians to start to recover from the conflict and rebuild their lives and livelihoods in Gaza,” Andersen says.

Rivers of sewage, dirty water and toxic air: The environmental disaster unfolding in Gaza

The cost of ‘conflict carbon’: Russia could face €30bn climate reparations bill for war in Ukraine

What did the UN’s environmental assessment of Gaza find?

Since it is not safe for UNEP to undertake field-based work, the report is informed by remote sensing surveys as well as data from Palestinian and multilateral partners.

“While many questions remain regarding the exact type and quantity of contaminants affecting the environment in Gaza, people are already living with the consequences of conflict-related damage to environmental management systems and pollution today,” Andersen adds.

“Water and sanitation have collapsed. Critical infrastructure continues to be decimated. Coastal areas, soil and ecosystems have been severely impacted. All of this is deeply harming people`s health, food security and Gaza`s resilience.”

Here are seven key takeaways from the preliminary assessment.

7. The conflict undoes recent environmental progress in Gaza

Gaza’s ecosystems had already been under decades-long pressure from recurring conflicts, rapid urbanisation, political conditions, and the region’s vulnerability to climate change.

More: https://hlrn.org/arabic/activitydetails.php?id=qGlkZQ==

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A Note About Genocide and Climate Injustice
Climate Defense Project December 2023

In recent weeks, people working for climate justice have faced questions about whether and how to respond to the situation unfolding in Palestine — a situation that can accurately be described as a genocide perpetrated by the Israeli government and backed by the U.S. government.

Nonprofit organizations like ours operate within cultural, legal, and philanthropic frameworks that, for understandable reasons, often divide issue areas from one another (for instance, climate justice from environmental conservation, and from racial justice, economic justice, and so on). We navigate these divisions when connecting with supporters, applying for funding, and filing our taxes, for instance. But real-world problems frequently cross these dividing lines, and movements for justice should pay attention when that happens.

There are many reasons to condemn Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Climate justice is, obviously, not the most pressing concern during an ongoing humanitarian crisis. But, in addition to our collective responsibility as humans to do whatever we can to stand in the way of genocide, there are important material, cultural, and ideological connections between Palestine solidarity and climate justice that, in our opinion, demand that climate advocates take notice:

Warfare is a destructive, polluting business that ravages both people and landscapes. In 2019, Brown University’s Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs published a report on the serious environmental impacts of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The report found that military vehicles and equipment consumed fossil fuels “at an extremely high rate” — the U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s single largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter — while also producing significant air pollution and toxic dust, destroying forest cover, and contaminating the water supply, harming the health of locals and U.S. military members alike. In Iraq, for example, increased rates of cancer, birth defects, and other conditions are thought to be related to war-related environmental damage and toxins.
Many of the financial asset managers supporting U.S. defense contractors also fund fossil fuel projects, deforestation, and other disastrous activities. Those asset managers include BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, Capital Group, Wellington, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Newport Trust Company, Longview Asset Management, Massachusetts Financial Services Company, Geode Capital, and Bank of America. It’s not difficult to see that profits from one activity can fund investment in another.
The violent appropriation of land and resources is part of what enables the fossil fuel system to proliferate, thereby fueling further violence. This pattern is not a thing of the past; it plays out even today. As the Israeli government escalates its genocidal violence against Palestinians, moving closer to total colonization, it is simultaneously licensing companies such as British Petroleum to explore for gas on the shores of Gaza.