Ecocide, Imperialism and Palestine Liberation

Israel has long framed pre-1948 Palestine as an empty, barren desert—an image it contrasts with the blooming oasis supposedly created by the establishment of the state of Israel. This racist environmental narrative depicts Palestine’s indigenous people as ecological savages who do not care for, and even destroy, the land on which they have lived for millennia. This environmental discourse is neither new nor unique to Israeli colonialism. In what she terms 'environmental orientalism', geographer Diana K. Davis notes how Anglo-European imaginaries in the 19th century often portrayed the environment of the Arab world as ‘degraded in some way’, implying the need for intervention to improve, restore, normalize, and repair it.1 

The Zionist ideology of land redemption is exemplified by the narrative constructed around the afforestation project led by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an Israeli parastatal organization. Through afforestation, the JNF sought to erase the physical and symbolic remnants of 86 Palestinian villages destroyed during the Nakba.2 Under the guise of conservation, the JNF weaponized the planting of trees to hide the realities of colonial mass displacement, ethnic cleansing, destruction of environments and dispossession, while creating a new landscape to replace the indigenous one. 

Ghada Sasa brilliantly unpacks such eco-colonial practices, describing them as green colonialism: Israel’s appropriation of environmentalism to eliminate the indigenous Palestinians and usurp their resources. She describes how Israel uses conservation designations (national parks, forests, and nature reserves) to (1) justify land grabs; (2) prevent the return of Palestinian refugees; (3) dehistoricize, Judaize, and Europeanize Palestine, erasing Palestinian identity and suppressing resistance to Israeli oppression; and (4) greenwash its apartheid image.3

Israeli resource seizure also extends to Palestine’s water. Shortly after the creation of Israel in 1948, the JNF drained Lake Hula and its surrounding wetlands in northern historic Palestine,4 claiming this was necessary to expand farmland. Yet not only did the project fail to expand ‘productive’ agricultural land for newly arrived European Jewish settlers, it caused substantial environmental damage, destroying vital plant and animal species,5 and it severely degraded the quality of water flowing into the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias), disrupting the Jordan River’s downstream flow.6 Around the same period, Mekorot—the Israeli national water company—began to divert water from the Jordan River towards Israeli coastal settlers and cities and Jewish settlements in the Naqab (Negev) desert.7 After the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israel intensified its plundering of water from the Jordan River. Today, the Jordan—especially its lower stretch—has been reduced to little more than a polluted creek filled with dirt and sewage.8

Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian environment, whether through afforestation or the draining of water resources, shows how attitudes to the environment sit within the broader settler-colonial enterprise. Settler-colonialism is a form of domination that violently disrupts people’s relationships with their environment by “strategically undermining the collective continuance of Indigenous communities on the land”.9 Seen in this way, settler-colonialism is ecological supremacy: it erases the qualities of relationships that matter to indigenous peoples, while imposing colonial ecologies in their place. As Kyle Whyte notes, “settler populations are working to create their own ecologies out of the ecologies of Indigenous peoples, which often requires that settlers bring in additional materials and living beings.”10 In this respect, Shourideh Molavi similarly argues that colonial violence is “foremost an ecological violence”, an attempt to overwrite one ecosystem with another. Eyal Weizman concurs, arguing that ‘the environment is one of the means by which colonial racism is enacted, land is grabbed, siege lines fortified, and violence perpetuated’.11 Weizman observes that in Palestine: "The Nakba also has a lesser-known environmental dimension, the complete transformation of the environment, the weather, the soil, the loss of the indigenous climate, the vegetation, the skies. The Nakba is a process of colonially imposed climate change".12 

It is in this context of Israeli transformation of the environment of Palestine that Palestinians now face the intensifying global climate crisis. By the end of this century, annual precipitation in Palestine may decline by up to 30 per cent compared to the 1961–1990 period.13 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that temperatures will increase by between 2.2 and 5.1°C, resulting in potentially catastrophic climate shifts, including intensified desertification.14 Agriculture, a cornerstone of the Palestinian economy, will be severely affected. Shorter growing seasons and rising water needs will increase food prices, threatening food security. 

Palestinian climate vulnerability should be understood within the brutal context of a century of colonialism, occupation, apartheid, dispossession, displacement, systemic oppression, and genocide. Due to this history, there are—and will be—profound asymmetries in how the climate crisis impacts Israel versus how it impacts the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as Zena Agha has described.15 Thus, while Israel’s ongoing occupation prevents Palestinians from accessing resources and developing adaptive infrastructure and strategies, Israel is one of the least climate-vulnerable countries in the region, and one of the most ready to tackle climate change. This is because it has grabbed, plundered and controlled most of Palestine’s resources, from land to water to energy, developing, on the backs of Palestinian workers and with the active support of imperialist powers, technology that can relieve some of the impacts of climate change. In a nutshell, the ability to adapt to climate change in Palestine and Israel is deeply stratified, structured along race, religion, legal status, as well as settler-colonial hierarchies. This is often referred to as climate or eco-apartheid.16

Nowhere is this situation seen more starkly than in the question of access to water. Unlike in neighbouring countries, there is no water shortage between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Yet a chronic water crisis affects Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as a result of occupation-enforced Jewish supremacy and apartheid water infrastructure. Since occupying the West Bank in 1967, Israel has monopolized water sources, a power formalized in the 1995 Oslo II agreement, which granted Israel control over around 80 per cent of West Bank water. While Israel advanced its water technology and expanded access across the Green Line, Palestinians saw their access decline due to apartheid, land theft, and dispossession. This includes Israel’s exercise of control over water sources, strict supply quotas for Palestinians, denial of development (such as digging wells), and repeated destruction of Palestinian water infrastructure. As a result, the Israeli Jewish population between the Jordan and the Mediterranean lives with the luxuries of desalination and abundance, while Palestinians face chronic shortages that will worsen under climate change. The disparity is striking: Israel’s daily per capita water use was 247 litres in 2020—over three times the 82.4 litres available to Palestinians in the West Bank.17 

In the West Bank, Israel’s 600,000 illegal settlers use six times more water than the Palestinian population of 3 million. Moreover, illegal Israeli settlements consume up to 700 litres per capita daily, including for luxuries like pools and lawns, while some Palestinian communities—disconnected from the water grid—survive on as little as 26 litres per person, close to the average in disaster zones and far below the amount of water sufficient for personal and domestic needs, i.e. between 50 and 100 litres of water per person per day, as recommended by the United Nations and the WHO.18 

In 2015, only 50.9 per cent of West Bank households had daily water access, while by 2020, B'Tselem estimated that just 36 per cent of West Bank Palestinians had reliable year-round access, with 47 per cent receiving water fewer than 10 days per month.

In Gaza, the situation is worse still. Even before the current genocide, only 30 per cent of households had daily water access, a figure which dropped sharply during Israeli assaults.19 Israel not only blocks sufficient clean water from entering Gaza, it also prevents the construction or repair of infrastructure by banning essential materials. The result is catastrophic: prior to the genocide, 90–95 per cent of Gaza’s water was unsafe for drinking or irrigation.20 Contaminated water caused over 26 per cent of reported diseases and was a leading cause of child mortality, responsible for more than 12 per cent of child deaths in the territory.21 In February 2025, as genocidal violence continued and famine worsened, Oxfam estimated that the amount of water available in Gaza was 5.7 litres per person per day.

In this context of restricted water access, climate change’s effects on water availability and quality will have deadly results, particularly in Gaza.

In this context of escalating water, environmental and climate crises faced by Palestinians, Israel presents itself as a champion of green technologies, desalination, and renewable energy projects in occupied Palestine and beyond. It uses its green image to justify its colonial policy and dispossession, greenwashing its settler-colonial and apartheid regime and covering up its war crimes against the Palestinian people by posing as a green and advanced country in an arid and regressive Middle East. This image has been reinforced by the Abraham Accords Israel signed with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan in 2020, and through agreements to jointly implement environmental projects concerning renewable energy, agribusiness, and water. These are a form of eco-normalization: the use of 'environmentalism' to greenwash and normalize Israeli oppression and the environmental injustices it produces in the Arab region and beyond.22

The normalization between Morocco and Israel in December 2020 came through a deal between two occupying powers, facilitated by their imperial patron (the US under Trump), whereby Israel and the US also recognized Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara. Since then, Israeli investments and agreements in Morocco have escalated, especially in the agribusiness and renewable energy sectors.

On 8 November 2022, during COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Jordan and Israel signed a UAE-brokered MoU to continue a feasibility study on two interlinked projects—Prosperity Blue and Prosperity Green—together forming Project Prosperity. Under the agreement, Jordan will buy 200 million cubic metres of water annually from an Israeli desalination station on the Mediterranean coast (Prosperity Blue). This station will be powered by a 600 megawatt (MW) solar plant in Jordan (Prosperity Green), to be constructed by Masdar, a UAE state-owned renewable energy company. The benevolent rhetoric behind Prosperity Blue masks Israel's decades-long looting of Palestinian and Arab water (described earlier), and helps it deny responsibility for regional water scarcity while portraying itself as an environmental steward and water power. Mekorot, a major player in Israeli desalination, positions itself as a global leader—thanks in part to Israel's greenwashing narrative. The profits it generates fund both its own operations and the Israeli government's practice of water apartheid against Palestinians.

In August 2022, Jordan joined Morocco, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and Oman in signing another MoU with two Israeli energy companies—Enlight Green Energy (ENLT) and NewMed Energy—to implement renewable energy projects across the region, including solar, wind and energy storage. These initiatives both reinforce Israel’s image as a hub for renewable energy innovation while also enabling it to deepen its settler-colonial project and extend its geopolitical influence across the region. The aim is to integrate Israel into the Arab region's energy and economic spheres from a position of dominance—creating new dependencies that strengthen the normalization agenda and present Israel as an indispensable partner. As ecological and climate crises worsen, countries reliant on Israeli energy, water, or technology may begin to view the Palestinian struggle as less important than securing their own access.

The involvement of Gulf companies such as Saudi ACWA Power and Emirati Masdar in these colonial ventures points to a key structural feature of the Arab region. Rather than viewing the region as an undifferentiated whole, it is crucial to recognize its internal hierarchies and inequalities. The Gulf functions as a semi-periphery—or even a sub-imperialist—force. Not only is it significantly wealthier than its neighbours, but it also participates in capturing and siphoning surplus value at the regional level, reproducing core-periphery dynamics of extraction, marginalization, and accumulation by dispossession.

The horrific crimes Israel is now committing in Gaza, against both its people and its environment, are an intensification of a longstanding war that has been described by Shourideh C. Molavi in her book Environmental Warfare in Gaza. Rejecting the notion of the environment as a passive backdrop to conflict, Molavi shows how Israeli settler-colonial practices make use of environmental elements as an active tool of military warfare in and around the Gaza Strip.23 In this warfare, the flattening of Gaza’s residential areas and the destruction of its agricultural spaces go hand in hand. 

Israel’s ecological violence in Gaza takes the form of razing land, imposing cultivation restrictions on Palestinian farmers—including limits on crop types and height—and nearly eradicating the territory’s traditional olive and citrus groves. Even outside of Israel’s periodic incursions and massacres, Israeli bulldozers routinely cross into Gaza to uproot crops and destroy greenhouses. In this way, as documented by Forensic Architecture, Israel has consistently expanded its military no-go area, or ‘buffer zone’, along Gaza’s eastern border. 

Since 2014, this process has included chemical warfare. Israel regularly deploys aerial crop dusters that spray toxic, plant-killing herbicides on Palestinian agricultural lands hundreds of meters inside Gaza.24 Between 2014 and 2018, the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture estimates that aerial herbicide spraying damaged more than 13 square kilometres of farmland in Gaza.25 The effects of these chemicals are not limited to crops: Al-Mezan, a Palestinian human rights NGO, has  warned that livestock consuming chemically affected plants may harm humans through the food chain.26

Even before the start of the current genocide, these practices had decimated entire swaths of arable land, stripping Gazan farmers of their livelihoods and granting the Israeli military improved visibility for remote targeting and lethal strikes.27 The result is that, in contrast to the miles of irrigated field crops (strawberries, melons, herbs, and cabbages) of the Israeli settlements adjacent to Gaza, Palestinian lands in Gaza appear barren—rendered lifeless not by nature but by design.  Rather than ‘making the desert bloom’, the colonizers are engaged in a process of desertification, transforming once fertile and active farmland into a parched and scorched area that is cleared of vegetation.

It is in this brutal and colonial reconfiguration of Gaza’s biopolitical landscape (and that of historic Palestine more broadly) that Hamas’ attack on 7 October took place. Since then, Israeli crimes in Gaza have entered the realm of ecocide. The full extent of the damage in Gaza has yet to be documented, and statistics are quickly rendered out of date as Israel continues its genocide. Nevertheless, some facts can be presented here.

As shown by the London-based research group Forensic Architecture, working with satellite imagery, since October 2023 Israeli forces have engaged in systematic targeting of orchards and greenhouses in a deliberate act of ecocide that exacerbates the ongoing catastrophic famine in Gaza and that is part of a wider pattern of depriving Palestinians of resources for survival.28 By March 2024, approximately 40 per cent of the land in Gaza previously used for food production had been destroyed, while nearly one-third of Gaza's greenhouses had been demolished, ranging from up to 90 per cent in the north of Gaza to about 40 per cent around the southern city of Khan Younis.29 Furthermore, analysis of satellite imagery provided to the Guardian in March 2024 shows that nearly half of Gaza’s tree cover and farmland had been destroyed by that time, including through the unlawful use of white phosphorus. As the Guardian article describes, olive groves and farms have been reduced to packed earth; munitions and toxins have contaminated soil and groundwater; and the air is polluted by smoke and particulate matter.30 It is very likely that the situation has dramatically worsened in the 14 months since these reports were written.

One of the deadliest elements in Israel’s ecocide in Gaza is its destruction of the territory’s water supply. Even before the outbreak of the genocide, around 95 per cent of water resources from Gaza's sole aquifer were contaminated and unsuitable for drinking or irrigation. This was the result of the inhumane blockade and periodic onslaughts, which hindered the creation and repair of water installations and desalination plants. Since October 2023, however, there has been a total breakdown and destruction of Gaza’s water facilities and infrastructure, resulting in the collapse of drinking water supplies and sewage management. This is leading to high levels of dehydration and diseases (such as typhoid).

As well as direct destruction from the military onslaught, the lack of fuel has left people in Gaza with no choice but to cut down trees to burn for cooking or heating, adding to the massive tree loss now taking place in the territory. At the same time, even the soil that remains is threatened by Israel’s bombing and demolitions. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the heavy bombardment of populated areas contaminates soil and groundwater in the long term, both through the munitions themselves and as collapsed buildings release hazardous materials (such as asbestos, industrial chemicals and fuel) into the surrounding air, soil and groundwater.31 As at July 2024, UNEP estimated that the bombing had left 40 million tonnes of debris and hazardous material, with much of the rubble containing human remains. Clearing Gaza of this war rubble will take 15 years and could cost more than $600 million.32

Israel’s ecocide extends to Gaza’s sea, which is choked with sewage and waste. When Israel cut off fuel to Gaza after 7 October, the resulting power cuts meant wastewater could not be pumped to treatment plants, leading to 100,000 cubic metres of sewage a day spewing into the Mediterranean. Alongside the destruction of health infrastructure, attacks on hospitals and health workers, and the severe restrictions on the entry of medical supplies, this has created a "perfect storm" for the outbreak of infectious diseases, such as cholera, and the resurgence of once-eradicated and vaccine-preventable diseases, such as polio.33

Taken together, the destruction described in the preceding paragraphs has led many observers and experts to say that Israel’s onslaught on Gaza’s ecosystems has made the area unliveable.

At the COP28 climate summit, held in Dubai in December 2023, Colombian President Gustavo Petro declared: "Genocide and barbaric acts unleashed against the Palestinian people is what awaits those who are fleeing the South because of the Climate Crisis… What we see in Gaza is the rehearsal of the future."34 As Petro’s words make clear, the genocide in Gaza is a warning of what's to come if we don't organize and resist. The empire and its ruling classes are prepared to sacrifice millions—Black, Brown, and White working-class people alike—to preserve capital accumulation and domination. Their refusal to commit to climate action at COP29 in Baku, while continuing to fund the genocide in Gaza, makes this clear, as did the vaccine apartheid that was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gaza also reveals how war and the military-industrial complex drive the climate crisis. As a matter of fact, the US Army is the world's largest institutional emitter.35 When it comes to the genocidal war in Gaza, in just two months, Israel's emissions surpassed the annual carbon output of over 20 of the world's most climate-vulnerable countries—largely from emissions related to US military cargo flights and weapons manufacturing.36 The US is not just enabling genocide; it is actively contributing to ecocide in Palestine. But the connection runs deeper. The struggle for Palestinian liberation is inseparable from the fight against fossil capitalism and US imperialism. Palestine is located in the heart of the Middle East, which remains central to the global capitalist economy, not only through trade and finance but also as the core of the world's fossil fuel regime, producing around 35 per cent of global oil.37 Meanwhile, Israel is seeking to become a regional energy hub, especially through Mediterranean gas fields like Tamar and Leviathan, for which it granted new gas exploration licenses just weeks into its genocidal war in Gaza.

US dominance of the Middle East, with the attendant influence on global fossil capitalism, rests on two pillars: Israel and the Gulf monarchies. Israel—described by former US secretary of state Alexander Haig as “the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk”—is the empire’s anchor, helping to control fossil fuel resources, pioneering surveillance and weapons, and integrating itself in the region through sectors like agribusiness, energy, and desalination. To advance their dominance, the US and its allies are actively working to normalize Israel’s role in the region. This process began with the Camp David Accords (1978) and the Jordan–Israel peace treaty (1994) and was followed by the Abraham Accords in 2020 with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Before 7 October, Saudi-Israel normalization was imminent, under US patronage, in a deal that would have erased the Palestinian cause. The Palestinian resistance’s actions have disrupted those plans.

All of this shows that Palestinian liberation is not simply a moral or human rights issue: it is a direct confrontation with US imperialism and fossil capitalism. For this reason, Palestinian liberation must be at the core of global environmental and climate justice struggles. That includes opposing normalization of Israel and supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, including in relation to green tech and renewables. There can be no climate justice without dismantling the Zionist settler-colony of Israel and overthrowing the reactionary Gulf regimes. Palestine stands at the global front against colonialism, imperialism, fossil capitalism, and white supremacy. That’s why climate justice movements, anti-racist groups, and anti-imperialist organizers must support the Palestinian struggle—and defend Palestinians’ right to resist by any means necessary.

Despite the omnipresent and unrelenting catastrophe they face, Palestinians continue to resist and inspire us daily with their sumud (steadfastness). This word has multiple meanings. Manal Shqair defines it as a pattern of everyday practices of resistance and adaptation to the daily difficulties of life under Israeli settler-colonial rule,38 while it also refers to the Palestinian people’s persistence in remaining on their land and maintaining their identity and culture in the face of Israeli dispossession and narratives that frame Jewish settlers as the only legitimate inhabitants.39 

Deepening our understanding of Palestinian steadfastness, Shqair has introduced the concept of eco-sumud, which refers to Palestinians’ everyday acts of steadfastness that involve environmentally rooted ways of maintaining a deep connection to the land. The concept embraces the indigenous knowledge, cultural values, and everyday practices that Palestinians use to resist the violent disruption of their bond with the land. Eco-sumud is based on the understanding that the only viable responses to ecological and climate crises are those which support the quest of the Palestinian people for justice, sovereignty and self-determination—an outcome that requires ending the occupation and the apartheid regime and dismantling Israel as a settler-colony. Practising eco-sumud is ingrained in a belief in the possibility of defeating Israeli settler-colonialism and affirms the unwavering desire of the colonized to shape their own destiny. 

This heroic Palestinian resistance, expressed through eco-sumud and a deep attachment to the land, is a source of inspiration for progressive movements worldwide that are fighting for justice amid overlapping disasters. There is no better way to close this chapter than quoting the words of the eco-Marxist Andreas Malm, who draws a moving parallel between the Palestinian resistance and the climate front:

"What can the climate front learn from Palestinian resistance? It's that even when the catastrophe is consummated – all-pervasive, omnipresent and unrelenting – we keep resisting. Even when it's too late, when everything has been lost, when the land has been destroyed, we rise out of the rubble and fight back. We do not yield; we do not surrender; we do not give up because Palestinians do not die. Palestinians will never be defeated. A strong army loses if it doesn't win, but a weak resistance army wins if it doesn't lose. I hope that the ongoing war in Gaza will end with the resistance intact, and that would be a victory. The continuation of the Palestinian resistance in itself would be a victory because – we're going to continue fighting, no matter the catastrophes you pour on us. This is a source of inspiration for the climate front. In this respect, the Palestinians do not only fight for themselves. They fight for humanity as a whole – for the idea of humanity that resists catastrophe, in whatever shape or form, and keeps going despite overwhelmingly superior forces on the other side. I think there are all sorts of reasons to stand in solidarity with Palestinian resistance for their own sake, but also for our own."40

The task in front of us is very challenging, but as Fanon once exhorted us, we must, out of relative obscurity, discover our mission, fulfil it, and not betray it.41