[ Israeli officials said their goal is to ensure that Gaza will be
an unlivable place once they end their merciless military campaign.
Filling those tunnels with polluted water will ensure remaining
residential buildings will suffer structural problems]
[[link removed]]

THE KILLING OF GAZA’S ENVIRONMENT – OR HOW TO CREATE AN UNLIVABLE
HELLSCAPE ON ONE STRIP OF LAND  
[[link removed]]


 

Joshua Frank
January 11, 2024
TomDispatch
[[link removed]]

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_ Israeli officials said their goal is to ensure that Gaza will be an
unlivable place once they end their merciless military campaign.
Filling those tunnels with polluted water will ensure remaining
residential buildings will suffer structural problems _

Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the
El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023., Photo by Naaman Omar
/Palestinian News & Information Agency (WAFA) In Contract With APA
Images, Cc By-Sa 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

 

On a picturesque beach in central Gaza, a mile north of the
now-flattened Al-Shati refugee camp, long black pipes snake through
hills of white sand before disappearing underground. An image
[[link removed]] released
by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shows dozens of soldiers laying
pipelines and what appear to be mobile pumping stations that are to
take water from the Mediterranean Sea and hose it into underground
tunnels. The plan, according to various reports
[[link removed]],
is to flood the vast network of underground shafts and tunnels Hamas
has reportedly built and used to carry out its operations. 

“I won’t talk about specifics, but they include explosives to
destroy and other means to prevent Hamas operatives from using the
tunnels to harm our soldiers,” said IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant
General Herzi Halevi. “[Any] means which give us an advantage over
the enemy that [uses the tunnels], deprives it of this asset, is a
means that we are evaluating using. This is a good idea…”

While Israel is already test-running
[[link removed]] its
flood strategy, it’s not the first time Hamas’s tunnels have been
subjected to sabotage by seawater. In 2013, neighboring Egypt
began flooding Hamas-controlled tunnels
[[link removed]] that
were allegedly being used to smuggle goods between the country’s
Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. For more than two years, water
from the Mediterranean was flushed into the tunnel system,
wreaking havoc
[[link removed]] on
Gaza’s environment. Groundwater supplies were quickly polluted with
salt brine and, as a result, the dirt became saturated and unstable,
causing the ground to collapse and killing numerous people
[[link removed]].
Once fertile agricultural fields were transformed into salinated pits
of mud, and clean drinking water, already in short supply in Gaza, was
further degraded.

Israel’s current strategy to drown Hamas’s tunnels will no doubt
cause similar, irreparable damage. “It is important to keep in
mind,” warns
[[link removed].] Juliane
Schillinger, a researcher at the University of Twente in the
Netherlands, “that we are not just talking about water with a high
salt content here — seawater along the Mediterranean coast is also
polluted with untreated wastewater, which is continuously discharged
into the Mediterranean from Gaza’s dysfunctional sewage system.”

This, of course, appears to be part of a broader Israeli objective —
not just to dismantle Hamas’s military capabilities but to further
degrade and destroy Gaza’s imperiled aquifers (already polluted
with sewage
[[link removed]] that’s
leaked from dilapidated pipes). Israeli officials have openly
admitted
[[link removed]] their
goal is to ensure that Gaza will be an unlivable place once they end
their merciless military campaign.

[[link removed]]

Buy the Book
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“We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly,”
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said
[[link removed]] shortly
after the Hamas attack of October 7th. “We will eliminate everything
— they will regret it.”

And Israel is now keeping its promise.

As if its indiscriminate bombing
[[link removed]],
which has already damaged or destroyed up to 70% of all homes
[[link removed]] in Gaza,
weren’t enough, filling those tunnels with polluted water will
ensure that some of the remaining residential buildings will suffer
structural problems, too. And if the ground is weak and insecure,
Palestinians will have trouble rebuilding.

Flooding tunnels with polluted groundwater “will cause an
accumulation of salt and the collapse of the soil, leading to the
demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes in the densely populated
strip,” says Abdel-Rahman al-Tamimi, director of the Palestinian
Hydrologists Group, the largest NGO monitoring pollution in the
Palestinian territories. His conclusion couldn’t be more stunning:
“The Gaza Strip will become a depopulated area, and it will take
about 100 years to get rid of the environmental effects of this
war.”

In other words, as al-Tamimi points out, Israel is now “killing the
environment.” And in many ways, it all started with the destruction
of Palestine’s lush olive groves.

OLIVES NO MORE

During an average year, Gaza once produced more than 5,000 tons of
olive oil from more than 40,000 trees. The fall harvest in October and
November was long a celebratory season for thousands of Palestinians.
Families and friends sang, shared meals, and gathered in the groves to
celebrate under ancient trees, which symbolized “peace, hope, and
sustenance [[link removed]].”
It was an important tradition, a deep connection both to the land and
to a vital economic resource. Last year, olive crops accounted for
more than 10% of the Gazan economy, a total of $30 million
[[link removed]].

Of course, since October 7th, harvesting has ceased.
Israel’s scorched earth
[[link removed]] tactics
have instead ensured the destruction of countless olive groves.
Satellite images released in early December affirm that 22%
[[link removed]] of
Gaza’s agricultural land, including countless olive orchards, has
been completely destroyed.

“We are heartbroken over our crops, which we cannot
reach,” explains
[[link removed]] Ahmed
Qudeih, a farmer from Khuza, a town in the Southern Gaza Strip. “We
can’t irrigate or observe our land or take care of it. After every
devastating war, we pay thousands of shekels to ensure the quality of
our crops and to make our soil suitable again for agriculture.”

Israel’s relentless military thrashing of Gaza has taken an
unfathomable toll on human life (more than 22,000 dead
[[link removed]],
including significant numbers of women and children, and thousands
more bodies believed to be buried under the rubble and so
uncountable). And consider this latest round of horror just a
particularly grim continuation of a 75-year campaign to eviscerate the
Palestinian cultural heritage. Since 1967, Israel has uprooted more
than 800,000 native Palestinian olive trees, sometimes to make way for
new illegal Jewish settlements
[[link removed]] in
the West Bank; in other instances, out of alleged security concerns,
or from pure, visceral 
[[link removed]]Zionist
[[link removed]] rage
[[link removed]].

Wild groves of olive trees have been harvested by inhabitants of the
region for thousands of years, dating back to the Chalcolithic period
[[link removed]] in
the Levant (4,300-3,300 BCE), and the razing of such groves has had
calamitous environmental consequences. “[The] removal of trees is
directly linked to irreversible climate change, soil erosion, and a
reduction in crops,” according to a 2023 _Yale Review of
International Studies_ report
[[link removed]]. “The perennial, woody bark
acts as a carbon sink … [an] olive tree absorbs 11 kg of CO2 per
liter of olive oil produced.”

Besides providing a harvestable crop and cultural value, olive groves
are vital to Palestine’s ecosystem. Numerous bird species
[[link removed]],
including the Eurasian Jay, Green Finch, Hooded Crow, Masked Shrike,
Palestine Sunbird, and Sardinian Warbler rely on the biodiversity
provided by Palestine’s wild trees, six species of which are often
found in native olive groves: the Aleppo pine, almond, olive,
Palestine buckhorn, piny hawthorne, and fig.

As Simon Awad and Omar Attum wrote
[[link removed]] in
a 2017 issue of the _Jordan Journal of Natural History_:

“[Olive] groves in Palestine could be considered cultural landscapes
or be designated as globally important agricultural systems because of
the combination of their biodiversity, cultural, and economic values.
The biodiversity value of historic olive groves has been recognized in
other parts of the Mediterranean, with some proposing these areas
should receive protection because they are habitat used by some rare
and threatened species and are important in maintaining regional
biodiversity.”

An ancient, native olive tree should be considered a testament to the
very existence of Palestinians and their struggle for freedom. With
its thick spiraling trunk, the olive tree stands as a cautionary tale
to Israel, not because of the fruit it bears, but because of the
stories its roots hold of a scarred landscape and a battered people
that have been callously and relentlessly besieged for more than 75
years.

WHITE PHOSPHORUS AND BOMBS, BOMBS, AND MORE BOMBS

While contaminating aquifers and uprooting olive groves, Israel is now
also poisoning Gaza from above. Numerous videos
[[link removed]] analyzed
by Amnesty International and confirmed by the _Washington
Post_ display footage of flares and plumes of white phosphorus
raining down on densely populated urban areas. First used on World War
I battlefields to provide cover for troop movements, white phosphorus
is known to be toxic and dangerous to human health. Dropping it on
urban environments is now considered illegal
[[link removed].] under
international law, and Gaza is one of the most densely populated
[[link removed]] places
on earth. “Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded
civilian areas, it poses a high risk of excruciating burns and
lifelong suffering,” says Lama Fakih, director for the Middle East
and North Africa at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

While white phosphorus is highly toxic to humans, significant
concentrations of it also have deleterious effects
[[link removed]] on plants and
animals. It can disrupt soil composition, making it too acidic to grow
crops. And that’s just one part of the mountain of munitions Israel
has fired at Gaza over the past three months. The war (if you can call
such an asymmetrical assault a “war”) has been the deadliest and
most destructive
[[link removed]] in
recent memory, by some estimates at least as bad as the Allied
bombing of Germany
[[link removed]] during
World War II, which annihilated 60 German cities and killed an
estimated half-million people.

Like the Allied forces of World War II, Israel is killing
indiscriminately. Of the 29,000 air-to-surface munitions
[[link removed].] fired,
40% have been unguided bombs dropped
[[link removed]] on crowded
residential areas. The U.N. estimates that, as of late December, 70%
[[link removed]] of
all schools in Gaza, many of which served as shelters for Palestinians
fleeing Israel’s onslaught, had been severely damaged. Hundreds of
mosques and churches have also been struck and 70%
[[link removed]] of
Gaza’s 36 hospitals have been hit and are no longer functioning.

A WAR THAT EXCEEDS ALL PREDICTIONS

“Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in
history,” claims
[[link removed]] Robert
Pape, a historian at the University of Chicago. “It now sits
comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing
campaigns ever.”

It’s still difficult to grasp the toll being inflicted, day by day,
week by week, not just on Gaza’s infrastructure and civilian life
but on its environment as well. Each building that explodes leaves a
lingering cloud of toxic dust and climate-warming vapors. “In
conflict-affected areas, the detonation of explosives can release
significant amounts of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide,
carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter,” says
[[link removed]] Dr.
Erum Zahir, a chemistry professor at the University of Karachi.

Dust from the collapsed World Trade Center towers on 9/11 ravaged
first responders. A 2020 study
[[link removed]] found
that rescuers were “41 percent more likely to develop leukemia than
other individuals.” Some 10,000 New Yorkers
[[link removed]] suffered
short-term health ailments following the attack, and it took a year
for air quality in Lower Manhattan to return to pre-9/11 levels.

While it’s impossible to analyze all of the impacts of Israel’s
nonstop bombing, it’s safe to assume that the ongoing leveling of
Gaza will have far worse effects than 9/11 had on New York City.
Nasreen Tamimi, head of the Palestinian Environmental Quality
Authority, believes
[[link removed]] that
an environmental assessment of Gaza now would “exceed all
predictions.”

Central to the dilemma that faced Palestinians in Gaza, even before
October 7th, was access to clean drinking water and it’s only been
horrifically exacerbated by Israel’s nonstop bombardment. A 2019
report by UNICEF noted
[[link removed]] that
“96 percent of water from Gaza’s sole aquifer is unfit for human
consumption.”

Intermittent electricity, a direct result of Israel’s blockade, has
also damaged Gaza’s sanitation facilities, leading to increased
groundwater contamination, which has, in turn, led to various
infections and massive outbreaks of preventable waterborne
diseases. According
[[link removed]] to
HRW, Israel is using a lack of food and drinking water as a tool of
warfare, which many international observers argue
[[link removed]] is
a form of collective punishment — a war crime
[[link removed]] of
the first order. Israeli forces have intentionally destroyed farmland
and bombed water and sanitation facilities in what certainly seems
like an effort to make Gaza all too literally unlivable.

“I have to walk three kilometers to get one gallon [of water],”
30-year-old Marwan told
[[link removed]] HRW.
Along with hundreds of thousands of other Gazans, Marwan fled to the
south with his pregnant wife and two children in early November.
“And there is no food. If we are able to find food, it is canned
food. Not all of us are eating well.”

In the south of Gaza, near the overcrowded city of Khan Younis, raw
sewage flows through the streets as sanitation services have ceased
operation. In the southern town of Rafah, where so many Gazans have
fled, conditions are beyond dire. Makeshift U.N. hospitals
are overwhelmed
[[link removed]],
food and water are in short supply, and starvation is
significantly on the rise
[[link removed]].
In late December, the World Health Organization (WHO) documented
[[link removed]] more
than 100,000 cases of diarrhea and 150,000 respiratory infections in a
Gazan population of about 2.3 million. And those numbers are likely
massive undercounts and will undoubtedly increase as Israel’s
offensive drags on, having already displaced 1.9 million people, or
more than 85% of the population, half of whom are now facing
starvation, according
[[link removed]] to
the U.N.

“For over two months, Israel has been depriving Gaza’s population
of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking
Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a
method of warfare,” reports
[[link removed]] Omar
Shakir of Human Rights Watch.

Rarely, if ever, have the perpetrators of mass murder (reportedly now
afraid
[[link removed]] of
South Africa’s filing at the International Court of Justice in the
Hague, accusing Israel of genocide) so plainly laid out their cruel
intentions. As Israeli President Isaac Herzog put it in a callous
attempt to justify the atrocities now being faced by Palestinian
civilians, “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible
[for October 7th]. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not
involved, it’s absolutely not true. They could’ve risen up, they
could have fought against that evil regime.”

The violence inflicted on Palestinians by an Israel backed so
strikingly
[[link removed]] by
President Biden and his foreign policy team is unlike anything we had
previously witnessed in more or less real-time in the media and on
social media. Gaza, its people, and the lands that have sustained them
for centuries are being desecrated and transformed into an all too
unlivable hellscape, the impact of which will be felt — it’s a
guarantee — for generations to come.

_[JOSHUA FRANK, a TomDispatch regular
[[link removed]], is an
award-winning California-based journalist and co-editor
of CounterPunch [[link removed]]. He is the author of
the new book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in
America
[[link removed]] 
[[link removed]](Haymarket
Books).]_

_Follow TomDispatch on Twitter
[[link removed]] and join us on Facebook
[[link removed]]. Check out the newest Dispatch
Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands
[[link removed]] (the
final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s
novel Every Body Has a Story
[[link removed]], and
Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War
[[link removed]],
as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century:
The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
[[link removed]], John
Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World
War II
[[link removed]], and
Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from
America’s Wars: The Untold Story
[[link removed]]._

_Copyright 2024 Joshua Frank. Cross-posted with permission. May not
be reprinted without permission from TomDispatch
[[link removed]]._

* Gaza
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* Palestine
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* Palestinians
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Israel
[[link removed]]
* Ceasefire
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* Genocide
[[link removed]]
* Israeli bombing
[[link removed]]
* Israeli airstrikes
[[link removed]]
* war crimes
[[link removed]]
* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* Hamas
[[link removed]]
* tunnels
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* flooding tunnels
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* Nabka
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