Israel: Making the Holy Land burn
Israeli forces and settlers have destroyed or damaged 4,500 olive trees in the occupied West Bank in just one month, according to a report.
Israeli forces and settlers have already damaged or uprooted 4,500 olive trees in the occupied West Bank this month. Since January, they have destroyed 100,000 olive trees. In Gaza, since October 2023, 97 percent of Gaza’s two million olive oil trees have been wiped out.
The systematic destruction of olive trees is a central component of Israel’s broader war on the Palestinian land, targeting its vegetation, soil, water, and ecosystems. This assault, which began with the 1948 Nakba, aims to erase the Palestinian presence and undermine the capacity of the land to sustain its inhabitants.
Ecocide in Gaza
The environmental devastation in Gaza has reached extreme levels. The genocidal war unleashed on the Strip has devastated agricultural land, trees, soil, and water. Approximately 85 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed, leaving an estimated 70 million tonnes of rubble containing various toxins.
Israeli bombardment has dispersed heavy metals, including lead, cadmium, arsenic, tungsten, and aluminium, as well as explosive compounds such as TNT, RDX, and perchlorates. These substances seep into the soil and groundwater, causing environmental damage that may persist for years.
Continuing bulldozing of buildings and land has stripped away the topsoil, which is rich in organic matter and nutrients essential for plant growth. This further degrades agricultural land, making it difficult for Palestinians to cultivate seasonal crops or restore their livelihoods.
Colonial policies reshape the landscape
The destruction of olive trees is part of a long-standing colonial policy that seeks to reshape the natural landscape. Zionist settlers coming from Europe sought to impose their own vision of agriculture, planting imported trees like the stone pine and eucalyptus, which burns easily and contributes to higher wildfire frequency.
These efforts to engineer the landscape were driven by a desire to erase the Palestinian presence. Trees were planted over the remains of pillaged villages to cover them up, and imported European-style agriculture wiped out native Palestinian techniques that had produced food for centuries.
Water has been at the centre of this process. Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, reroutes water from Palestinian towns and villages to illegal settlements. It often cuts off water to Palestinians in the summer to ensure a steady supply to the settlers, devastating Palestinian agriculture and ecosystems.
A personal story of resilience
The author, Refaat Ibrahim, describes the devastating impact of this policy on his family’s olive grove. His grandfather, Hamdan, tended an eight-dunam grove that produced 1,500kg of olive oil each season.
For my grandfather, the olive trees were more than a livelihood. He saw them as his children, the fruit of years of care and his family’s bond to the land.
The grove was bulldozed during the 2008 war and destroyed again during the 2014 war. Less than a week after its destruction in 2014, Hamdan died from the shock. His family replanted the land in 2015, but it was bombed again during the 2021 war.
The land was so damaged that it was no longer suitable for olive cultivation. Clearing the contamination and burying bomb craters took a long time, but the family managed to plant seasonal crops like wheat. Then in December 2023, the Israeli army devastated the grove again.
Despite all the destruction, Palestinians continue to tend to the land. Even in camps for the displaced, people are keeping small gardens in front of their tents, planting mint, basil, and flowers. This drive to tend to land is so deeply ingrained in Palestinians that it persists even under the most extreme conditions.
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