The Israel-Hamas war has devastated Gaza in ways that may be irreversible — and a picture of the environmental harm is only just beginning to emerge, as violence spreads across the region.
Israel has dropped thousands of bombs, wiping out most of Gaza’s tree cover and agricultural land in addition to buildings, while leaving behind toxic debris and destroying water and sanitation facilities. Greenhouse gas emissions are stacking up from explosions, military vehicles and overseas weapons shipments.
As fighting in Lebanon and tensions between Israel and Iran continue to escalate, so too do concerns about the climate and environmental impact of the war.
“The intensity of it is an order magnitude greater than we’ve seen before — because it has been ongoing for so long, because it has been this deliberate effort to cause very severe damage to Gaza,” said Doug Weir, director at the U.K.-based Conflict and Environment Observatory, a group that works to increase awareness of the environmental consequences of war.
Destruction of agricultural land
The environment cannot escape damage from wars around the world, which almost invariably cause significant pollution and destroy wildlife habitats, with consequences that last for generations. Scientists have expressed similar concerns over the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, which is taking place over a larger geographical area.
Agricultural damage in the Gaza Strip is one such example. He Yin, head of the Remote Sensing and Land Science Lab at Kent State University in Ohio, has been studying that impact in Gaza over the past year using satellite imagery. His images show Israel has destroyed 70 per cent of the strip’s agricultural land and tree cover in the year since the war broke out.
“The damage rate is quite stunning. [According to the] Geneva Convention, agricultural fields shouldn’t be the target during wartime,” Yin said.
“The environmental damage, it’s tremendous, and it affects everything.”
Plants cool land surface temperature and also absorb carbon dioxide, so the destruction of vegetation can exacerbate the effects of climate change in a larger region that is already warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.
Yin said he has not seen any other war zones with as high of an agricultural land damage rate.
The Israel Defence Forces “most certainly does not use water, agricultural land or any humanitarian resources as a weapon of war,” a military spokesperson said in a statement, but Hamas embeds military assets “in, beneath and in proximity to” agricultural lands.
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“The IDF is locating and destroying these terror infrastructures, which have been discovered, among other places, in and near the agricultural and water facilities in question.”
Yin is concerned that damage to the land and vegetation will continue to spread as the war expands across the region and continues in Gaza.
“Some areas that have really unique flora and native plants … I’m worried that, if the war continues, sooner or later, they will be gone, as well,” he said. “So we’re also going to lose all these endemic plants, all these important ecosystems.”
As of April, Israel had dropped an estimated 70,000 tonnes of bombs on Gaza, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. And by July, Israel’s use of explosive weapons had generated more than 42 million tonnes of debris, the UN estimated, much of which may be contaminated with biological waste, unexploded bombs, asbestos and other harmful building materials.
Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel killed about 1,200 people and took around 250 hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. The ensuing ground invasion has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians since then, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced.
Greenhouse gas emissions in the air
A June study by an international team of researchers found that the emissions from the first 120 days of the war alone were greater than the annual emissions of 26 individual countries and territories.
Co-author Benjamin Neimark, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, says the study does not include all related emissions and was only meant to provide a “conservative snapshot” of a very intense period of military carbon emissions.
“Now we’re looking at [more than] 365 days. And expand it spatially, geographically, let’s say, and also types of fighting. Then you’re for sure going to get a much higher number,” he said.
Neimark says the biggest source is likely the continuous shipment of weapons from North America and Europe to Israel on large cargo jets.
Currently, militaries report their emissions voluntarily — and spottily, if at all, but one joint study estimates military activity accounts for up to 5.5 per cent of global emissions.
“Essentially, we can’t cut what we don’t know, right? And now we know very little,” Neimark said.
Polluted water, damaged sewage facilities
The Palestinian Water Authority reported in October that more than 85 per cent of Gaza’s water and sewage facilities are either fully or partially non-operational because of Israeli attacks on critical water and wastewater infrastructure. As a result, raw sewage has been discharged into the Mediterranean, polluting the sea and contributing to waterborne diseases.
As the conflict expands across the region, some fear Israel could target oil infrastructure in Iran, which Weir says could cause massive fires and significant harm to the air, soil and water that would extend to neighbouring countries.
There are few mechanisms to hold countries accountable for environmental destruction during war, though several countries are pushing for ecocide to become an international crime.
For individuals, the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court, deems it a war crime to cause severe environmental damage that is “clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.”
‘Some of it will not be repairable’: scientist
Mazin Qumsiyeh, director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University in the West Bank, says Israel is committing genocide and intentionally making Gaza unlivable — an accusation South Africa has brought in an ongoing case before the UN’s top court.
Israel has repeatedly denied such allegations, opposing the findings of some human rights groups.
“Some of [the damage] will be repairable, but some of it will not be repairable,” Qumsiyeh said. “We won’t know for sure these things until we have access and are able to collect soil samples and water samples and analyze them in laboratories.
Ismail Alyan says he was eating breakfast with his family when his apartment near the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza was nearly destroyed in an Israeli attack on June 8 that rescued four Israeli hostages but killed over 270 Palestinians.
“All the laboratories in Gaza have been destroyed, of course, so we don’t have a chance to use any inside laboratory.”
The destruction of agricultural land is also devastating to Gaza’s economy, grinding its food exports to a halt and eliminating one of the biggest job sources, he said.
Apart from the environmental and economic devastation, Qumsiyeh says it is also culturally devastating for the Palestinian people. The area that includes the Palestinian territories as well as Israel was among the first in the world to develop agriculture thousands of years ago.
“The devastation is beyond comprehension to not just the economic aspect, but the social fabric and cultural connectivity to the land.”
Qumsiyeh said about one-third of the Wadi Gaza Nature Reserve has also been significantly damaged in the war, including by nearby attacks like the Israeli air assault on the Nuseirat refugee camp in June that Palestinian officials say killed at least 274 people and wounded 698
Although there is no way to currently measure the impact, he says there will likely be devastation for the animals living there, which include foxes, hyenas and endangered raptors and owls.
In addition to the human tragedy, Qumsiyeh says it is “totally nuts” environmentally to see the Middle East war expand into Lebanon with little serious discussion about the possibility of diplomacy.
“Wars are catastrophic for the global environment, not just for the local environment,” he said. “When we see the hurricanes that now are affecting the U.S., this is all related.
“These are not isolated things. We cannot afford wars anymore.”
