200 Hectares Of Agricultural Land In Gaza Remain Accessible & Undestroyed - To Support 2 Million People

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While the destruction of buildings and infrastructure in Gaza is visible in every video we see, less visible is the parallel destruction of ecosystems and means of subsistence. Before the 7 October atrocity that triggered the current assault on Gaza, about 40% of its land was farmed. Despite its extreme population density, Gaza was mostly self-sufficient in vegetables and poultry, and met much of the population’s demand for olives, fruit and milk. But last month the UN reported that just 1.5% of its agricultural land now remains both accessible and undamaged. That’s roughly 200 hectares – the only remaining area directly available to feed more than 2 million people.

Part of the reason is the systematic destruction of farmland by the Israeli military. Ground troops have demolished greenhouses; bulldozers have toppled orchards, ploughed out crops and crushed the soil; and planes have sprayed herbicides over the fields. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) justify these attacks by claiming that “Hamas often operates from within orchards, fields, and agricultural land.” And apparently from hospitals, schools, universities, industrial estates and any other resources on which the Palestinians depend. All the IDF needs to do in order to rationalise destruction is to suggest that Hamas has operated or might operate from the thing it wants to destroy. And if there’s no evidence – sorry, too late.

The IDF is steadily expanding the “buffer zone” along Gaza’s eastern border, which happens to contain much of the Strip’s agricultural land. As the human rights specialist Hamza Hamouchene points out, rather than “making the desert bloom” – a mainstay of Israeli state propaganda – it is turning fertile and productive land into desert. The Israeli government has been felling Palestinians’ ancient olive trees for decades to deprive them of subsistence, demoralise them and break their connection with the land. Olives are both materially crucial, accounting for 14% of the Palestinian economy, and symbolically powerful: if there are no olive trees, there can be no olive branch. Israel’s scorched-earth policy, in conjunction with its blockade of food supplies, guarantees famine.

The IDF’s assault on Gaza has caused a collapse in wastewater treatment. Raw sewage floods the land, seeps into aquifers and poisons coastal waters. The same thing has happened to solid waste disposal: mountains of rubbish now rot and smoulder among the ruins or are pushed into informal waste dumps, leaching contaminants. Before the current assault, people in Gaza had access to about 85 litres of water per person per day, which, while sparse, meets the recommended minimum level. As of February this year, the average had fallen to 5.7 litres. Gaza’s crucial coastal aquifer is further threatened by the IDF’s flooding of Hamas tunnels with seawater: salt intrusion, beyond a certain point, will render the aquifer unusable.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/27/israel-ecocide-gaza-bombs-agricultural-land-genocide