Ecocide Is Fertilizer For Occupation

Photo by ISM Palestine.

Over 800,000 Palestinian olive trees have been ripped from the ground that has been under Israeli control since 1967. The olive branch is a symbol of hope and peace to many, but for the Palestinian people, it represents their deep-rooted connection to the land, a longing for liberation, and the virtue of persistence through seasons of oppression. Despite unrelenting droughts and efforts to uproot them, olive trees, much like those who have historically cultivated them, are known for their resilience and remarkable ability to survive. Since October 7, Gaza has suffered the leveling of entire olive groves and orchards alongside the destruction of one-third of its 7,500 greenhouses, a key component of Palestinian agricultural infrastructure. These actions are justified by Israeli authorities as a way to “establish an operational foothold in the area and allow the passage of forces and logistical equipment.” The past year of the Israeli military’s environmental impact in Gaza encapsulates the mutually reinforcing relationship between the political and physical dimensions of occupation. In order to maintain political power over Gaza and its people, Israel has exercised force on both Palestinians and the environment they inhabit—squandering both the dignity and the natural wealth they have inherited—in the process multiplying the pressure of its occupation. 

A 2024 MIT study defines environmental terrorism as the theft, destruction, or manipulation of critical natural resources for the purposes of “forcing political and/or ideological change.” Every year, roughly 19 million cubic meters of wastewater from Israeli settlements contaminate the West Bank alone, an already water-scarce territory. From October 7 through this past March, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported 650 attacks—harming Palestinian civilians and destroying property—by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Armed settlers have a history of uprooting trees and setting orchards ablaze in order to make way for further expansion of illegal settlements, oftentimes with the tacit backing if not outright protection from the Israeli military. This kind of behavior serves to displace families, decimate the capabilities of resistance in civil society, and render Palestinian land fundamentally unliveable. If this is not environmental terrorism, what is?

This picture of environmental devastation underscores the fact that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is fundamentally an issue of climate justice. The sheer scale of the destruction and its potential long-term implications for the environment have resulted in an investigation by researchers and environmental organizations into Israel’s ecocide as a potential war crime. Throughout its occupation, Israel has long utilized similar tactics of environmental ruination, destroying olive trees and agricultural land as a strategy to force Palestinians off of their land and make way for the expansion of illegal settlements. This tactic is an effective way to suppress resistance movements, to strip Palestinians of their agency over their own land and livelihoods, and to achieve Israel’s goal of ethnic cleansing and displacement.

Palestine is already considered one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change while being responsible for a disproportionately low contribution to global emissions. Its geography is hot, arid, and water scarce due to its climatic zone, and the area is historically prone to earthquakes, floods, droughts, and landslides. By 2050, Gaza is expected to experience more unpredictable weather and 20% less rainfall, devastating forecasts for a society that was heavily dependent on agriculture before the war. Still, statistics do not fully capture the stakes at hand. A Gazan farmer by the name of Abu Ibrahim offers his account for perspective:

I own 120 olive trees, which would usually produce 12 tons of olives. This year, however, they produced one ton only! The extreme temperatures and uneven distribution of rainfall have seriously impacted the flowering phase and tree-load. We’ve never witnessed such a decrease in tree-load over the past ten years.

By 2055, temperatures are projected to further increase by up to 2.5 degrees celsius, almost guaranteeing a series of droughts, heatwaves, and dry spells. Sea level rise has also intensified the lack of clean water access by increasing the chances of coastal erosion and otherwise preventable contamination. Israel has taken advantage of the deliberate accumulation of these changing conditions to solidify its control over the occupied territories.

The style of this environmental destruction falls in line with (and is fundamentally connected to) Israel’s historical practices of expanding its territory and ethnically cleansing the Palestinian population. Between 1967-2017, Israel appropriated at least 100,000 hectares of Palestinian land. During the latest war, Israeli authorities have not-so-subtly proposed “the creation of a ‘buffer zone’ along the boundary between Gaza and Israel,” implying that some demolitions are intended to be permanent. Some have already made possible the construction of new Israeli military infrastructure. Yasmina Guerda of the United Nations Humanitarian Aid Office states that there is now a need for “brand new words” to capture the absolute devastation in Gaza. This kind of ineffable destruction has never been limited to combat zones or urban areas, a fact to which the olive groves are testament. It is worth reflecting on why that is the case. For an occupation that is characterized by its persistence to annex more land, ecocide has been and will continue to be pivotal to expanding Israel’s settler-colonial project.

Evidently, Israel has failed to abide by international legal provisions obligating the protection of an occupied territory’s natural environment. Prior to this year’s genocidal assault on Gaza, Israel’s blockade had already rendered it barely liveable by isolating the local economy, limiting the availability of clean drinking water, and collapsing the healthcare system. The unprecedented environmental damage of Israel’s ecocide in Gaza has exponentially compounded the humanitarian costs of this genocidal war beyond the mere violence of the military operation itself. During the Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949, it was determined under customary international law that “to the fullest extent of the means available to it, the occupying power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population.” Not only has Israel failed to meet this expectation, it has actively disadvantaged the occupied territories through its exploitation of local resources, the total restriction of Palestinian agency, and the destruction of the environment through its violent military operations. By both killing people and ridding the means by which people live, Israel’s occupation has become a murderous machine that seeks to perpetuate itself for generations to come.

Furthermore, Israel’s control of Palestinian affairs restricts the occupied civilians’ capacity to sustainably manage the territory’s natural resources. A defining component of Israel’s occupation of Palestine is its absolute control over virtually every aspect of Palestinian life, completely stifling autonomous social and economic development. In occupied Gaza, Israel regulates borders, commands the airspace, controls territorial waters, has authority over the flow of currency, dominates the motion of humanitarian assistance, validates identification and documentation, and hosts all communication connections to the outside world. In turn, Gazans are left without the bureaucratic ability to regulate vital natural resources, much less the fiscal means to invest in projects to protect themselves from climate adversity. Palestinian’s lack of autonomy over their land or their own affairs, combined with the climatic vulnerabilities of the region at large, are essential to this occupation’s characteristically cyclical injustice. 

Proposals by wealthy high-emission nations to address the climate crisis likewise perpetuate this cycle. The hypocrisy of the US and other Western governments is twofold: they advocate for “peace” while funding the oppression of Palestinians, and they claim to fight climate change while contributing to record-breaking CO2 levels. At this year’s COP28 summit, Israel was welcomed to participate despite the fact that it was well into its indiscriminate bombing campaign that continues to obliterate the environment that the summit was ostensibly convening to protect. As of February 2024, Israel’s wartime emissions surpassed the annual emissions of 26 individual countries. Writer and climate-tech startup founder Ameera Kawash captured the dissonance created by Israel’s switch from “genocidal threats to eco-friendly jargon.” This contradictory behavior is a clear indication of Western states’ complicity in prolonging and enabling Israel’s ecocide. The world cannot allow this double standard to exist because it undermines both international law and the purported goal of global climate politics. If institutions are of any value whatsoever, nations cannot reap political benefits by joining efforts to “combat” the existential threat presented by climate change while concentrating that threat against the existence of millions of innocent people.

As the US and others continue to send billions of dollars to Israel to provide weapons to elongate its genocidal military campaign, Western nations push Palestine deeper into an ecological crisis and undermine their own arguments for peace and climate justice. Just as imperialist states often justify colonization as doing the indigenous people “a favor,” they frame their environmental politics in a “helpful” light through greenwashing, “the act of making false or misleading statements about the environmental benefits of a product or practice.” This component of the cycle is made as indispensable as the others by proxy of providing political cover—almost plausible deniability—for the real harm done to Palestinians in times of both war and “peace.” For instance, Israeli professor and academic Neve Gordon explains that “Israel portrayed itself as bringing progress to the uncivilized Palestinians, while emphasizing both the ‘purity of arms’ of its military and the temporariness of the occupation.” The notion that the continued occupation of Palestine or Israel’s significant political influence in the realm of climate policy is somehow benefiting the Palestinians perpetuates the reality of the status quo.

Environmental devastation and the weaponization of climate change are not novel issues in warfare, international conflict, or social justice. A growing body of research supports the conclusion that resource scarcity induced by climate change increases the likelihood of violent conflict within politically fraught and unstable states. Moreover, energy insecurity, mass displacement, disproportionately distributed climate effects, the destabilization of food and water resources, and inconsistent global politics for climate mitigation likewise contribute to a heightened risk of interstate conflict. But for all of the multiplying effects that these factors may have on the likelihood of violence, little is spoken of the mutually reinforcing relationship between the physical and political within the context of occupation. 

The case study of Palestine clearly demonstrates the idea that all oppression is connected, but it also provides a unique example of the ways in which occupiers double the strength of their hand by exploiting these connections. Much like the positive feedback loops that constitute the most grave threats presented by climate change, occupation relies on the continued destruction of the physical environment as a means to further consolidate power in the political environment. The systems that Israel and other powerful nations have wielded to uproot Palestinians from their homes, perpetuate apartheid, and deflect political pressure from the occupation are the same ones that disable potentially fruitful efforts at addressing climate injustice everywhere. Like the olive trees, Palestinians have demonstrated their unmatched ability to survive, but breaking the circularity of their oppression is the only way they can thrive.

Carolina Javier (BC ’27) is a staff writer at CPR majoring in human rights and political science. She is originally from New York—just up the Hudson River—and loves animals, the arts, and national parks.