Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance

by Shourideh C. Molavi, Eyal Weizman (Foreword)

The perimeter around the occupied Gaza Strip is formed by a sophisticated system of fences, forts, and surveillance technologies. With each Israeli incursion, a military no-go area, or a 'buffer zone', is established along Gaza's 'borders', extending deep into Palestinian residential areas and farmlands— further compounding the Gaza Strip's isolation from the rest of Palestine.

Since 2014, the bulldozing of Palestinian lands by the Israeli occupation forces has been complemented by unannounced aerial spraying of military herbicides, extending the reach of Israeli violence into the realm of chemical warfare. Today, the spraying has destroyed entire swaths of arable land in Gaza, forcibly changing a once-lush Palestinian landscape, and providing the Israeli army with better visibility to fire at Palestinian targets with lethal force from a distance.
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This book is a vivid document of this latest stage of Israeli warfare, including original maps, images, and visualizations which deepen our understanding of its environmental and human impact. It collects new documents, original archival materials, stills of drone footage, first-hand testimonies of farmers, organizers and protesters, and documents affected vegetation in Gaza as 'silent witnesses' to Israeli settler-colonial violence.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Environment, War, Middle East, Education

160 pages, Paperback

Published February 20, 2024

Reviews

[poetic interludes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an important book. I commend the research conducted to write this book, the author brilliantly provides a narrative based on first-hand statistical and observational research. Very interesting to see how ecological warfare is utilized as a method of suppressing Palestinian farmers.

Although the book comes in at around 100 pages, don’t be fooled by the low page count — every sentence matters. Read this book carefully and with intention. One of the most brilliant displays of research I’ve had the pleasure of reading, and allowed me to get better educated on an aspect of warfare that I was ignorant about.

[Joshua Glucksman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An infamous 2020 headline: “Jared Kushner Claims He Can Solve Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Because He’s ‘Read 25 Books on It”

Well I have now read 26 books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Suck it Jared. And I have not solved the conflict but I promise it’s not the same solution

[Anton Alexandrov · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is more of a research paper than a book but a good one nevertheless. A good addition to the already endless list of things to hate "Israel" for.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short book on the production of the 'Gaza Strip' by Israel and its consequences for land and landscape from the Forensic Architecture end of theory/design/history: obviously overtaken by events (it ends with an obituary for one of the author's friends and contacts, murdered by the IDF at the time it was going to press) but is very impressive - especially in the concluding section on how the blasted, securitised area around the wall enclosing Gaza became an object of protest and mobilisation in the 2018-2019 March of Return.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible research and photographs from Molavi and the Forensic Architecture team. This page summarizes the results of the same study that this book is based on.

The below is paraphrased from the book!

Around the border, the IOF enforces that crops be no higher than 40 centimeters. This is done to maintain optimal security visibility and surveillance of the border area. It creates a flattened, horizontal panopticon--a space of conscious observation among colonized subjects, of permanent visibility. Farmers have also transitioned to only crops that can be harvested in daylight, because of the danger of getting shot by snipers at night.

Since 2014, the clearing and bulldozing of agricultural and residential land along the Eastern perimeter of Gaza has been complemented by the unannounced aerial spraying of crop-killing herbicides. Satellite imagery analysis verified that the IOF weaponizes the wind to send herbicides sprayed on the Israeli border far into Gazan communities, harming crops and community health. To date, no Palestinian farmers have ever been compensated for damages to their crops resulting from herbicidal spraying.

Satellite image analysis was also conducted on a longer time frame. The study of 2,924 images from 1985-2018 shows that the areas that completely lost vegetation were mostly in the Gaza Strip, while the areas that have become greener over time, with increased vegetation, occur mainly on the Israeli side of the perimeter. They also show Palestinian farms moving away from the border area, the border itself becoming increasingly defined, and the soil becoming increasingly bare and vegetation disappearing on the Gazan side.

This project, along with the rest of Forensic Architecture's work, demonstrates that "high-tech analyses and tools representing the intertwined and multi-formed lived experience of violence can open the discussion on ways to confront and address colonial practices of environmental domination and erasure."

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ummmm. This one is a bit of a difficult one to rate because of the sheer excitement with which I first approached, opened, and started reading this book. Read as part of a reading group with Harvest Marrakech, we met weekly over a span of two months to discuss the book. I loved seeing how far the connections went, from archiving resistance to the recent uprisings in Morocco.

However, although this might be one of the book's strengths, I found that the style of the book kept me somewhere in an awkward middle, like being pulled into a dark and unknown house and being told to find my own way out. As an academic book, it could've had more information on exactly how she performed the FA research - what was it like collecting data, how did she map, what were the exact variables for plant deterioration? I wanted more information; and, perhaps she was holding back for good reason, which makes me doubt my criticism.
On a more personal note, I wanted more pathos, more emotion, more realness, and when Shourideh's own voice shone through, like in the introduction or towards the conclusion, I loved it. Her eloquence in explaining her viewpoints and her grammar/dictionary was wonderful, and it got me so excited to read more. But then the book slowed down. Stories that could have been infused with oral histories - which she must have/did have access to based on her descriptions - were left rather choppy. In other words, the book could have been so much more than it was, although it contained a lot.

On another note, the way in which the book was feeling rather uncontained, fragmented, perhaps lacking a deep-felt intentionality, could be due to the fact that she started this work pre-genocide, and thus had to hurry, speed up, shorten, summarize, and make digestible for a wider audience, a book written (initially) on primarily academic premises. And this I applaud.

[endrju]

The book ends with a tribute to Roshdi Yahya al-Sarraj (1992–2023), a colleague of the author and co-researcher on the book, who was killed in Israel's war on Gaza. I can only begin my review by acknowledging the genocide and war atrocities committed by Israeli forces under Netanyahu.

My intention in picking up this book was to explore how the environment and the more-than-human are used in waging war or in producing conditions that render places unlivable for both humans and others. I’m particularly interested in how these unlivable conditions are created at the expense of the non-human and more-than-human. This interest stems from living in a city that seems to have made a decision to destroy all plant life and most non-human animal life. The push for investment urbanism is so intense that very little will be left besides superfluous commercial-apartment buildings.

I’m fully aware that postsocialist urban policies are a far cry from war-torn Gaza, a place that has been actively destroyed for decades. Still, this book compellingly shows how various techniques used for the destruction of plant life serve the production of space—whether in Gaza, where the space is one of surveillance and death, or in Belgrade, where it is for the maximum extraction of surplus value.

Another crucial aspect the book touches on is the use of herbicides. We urgently need more histories of their formulation, production, and deployment—pretty much everywhere.

An excellent work that I only wish had been more comprehensive and longer.

[Jacqueline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so grateful for the existence of this study exploring the ways in which settler colonialism seeks to weaponise the very earth beneath our feet. Concentrating particularly on the orange harvest and spraying of crops with herbicide, 'Environmental Warfare in Gaza' reveals the many ways in which the land is injured, and the population of Gaza separated from their land, their culture, and their history, by relentless Colonial violence. We have no idea but it is our responsibility to learn as best we can.

I hope that Shourideh C. Molavi, or another writer, will publish a similar study on the loss of Palestinian olive trees. The plants of Palestine are also victims of this g-cide. May they, and the people who love them, one day be free.

[Jenni]

Original research on an important and under-explored topic. It reads like a relatively accessible academic thesis.

FWIW, I found out afterward that in late 2023 an Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed one of the two main investigative researchers that gathered the original research presented in this book. The other researcher wrote this book. RIP and thank you.

[Remi Beauharnois]

“The IOF first began spraying herbicides by air to raze Palestinian fields in Gaza along its imposed buffer zone from 11–13 October 2014.70 This practice has since been continuously applied in key harvest periods resulting in the destruction of entire swaths of formerly arable land and the loss of livelihoods for Gazan farmers. The spring and winter of 2019 were the first two seasons during which the military has not conducted aerial spraying in the past four years. However, the Israeli Ministry of Defence (MOD) has yet to officially declare ceasing this devastating practice altogether. “

“In December 2015, the Israeli army first confirmed that it used crop dusters for the herbicidal clearing of vegetation and crops along the border with Gaza. The army spokesperson stated that “[t]he aerial spraying of herbicides and germination inhibitors was conducted in the area along the border fence [...] in order to enable optimal and continuous security operations.”71 The objective is to eliminate tall plants growing close to the border in order to enhance visibility for Israeli military operations. In effect, Israel has declared aerial herbicidal spraying on the border in Gaza to be an ‘act of warfare’—one that operationalizes a settler-colonial cartographic gaze.”

“The reason why the Cherokee’s constitution and their agricultural prowess stood out as such singular provocations to the officials and legislators of the state of Georgia—and this is attested over and over again in their public statements and correspondence—is that the Cherokee’s farms, plantations, slaves and written constitution all signified permanence. The first thing the rabble did, let us remember, was burn their houses.”

“Labeling these [medicinally and culturally significant] plants as weeds renders them invasive and is itself a claim on what is accepted as native to the Palestinian terrain. Categorized as invasive plants, the mythical and practical dimensions of their everyday use by the indigenous community simultaneously becomes a ‘nuisance’—a hindrance toward enlightened understandings of growth, development, profit, and, by extension, societal progress. In this process, it is not only the weeds themselves that become ‘natural enemies’ of the land, but also the indigenous Palestinian community by extension.”


“The slow ‘desertification’ of a once lush and agriculturally active border zone provided the Israeli army with this visibility from a distance enabling the maiming of tens of Palestinians, mostly young men.”

“The types of injuries we are used to seeing normally result from 5.56 bullets used by the army. These bullets also do damage but not like the severe injuries we have witnessed from the bullets used during the protests [...] This bullet is more dangerous than the live bullets normally used [...] it breaks into many sections that can hit various organs and cause bleeding, which may lead us to remove the organ. These types of wounds often leave the surgeon in Gaza with very little choice; all bad choices.”

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty much exactly what I was hoping for when I bought it! The intro serves as a powerful general introduction to concepts around how Israel utilises it's settler-colonial structures to wage ecocidal violence against that then reifies the mythology of the regime. Elements of this will be familiar to many readers: it is obvious how they cynically use bombs and bulldozers to support the myth of a people-less desert that Israel will "make bloom"; their destruction of natural ecosystems to plant European pine is fairly well known (if only for the resulting wild-fires as pine is not suited to climate); their brutal use of interior check points - lined with snipers and the corpses of children that roam too close - is a similarly familiar way of colonial structuring of the landscape.

After this intro, the book then addresses the authors personal work in Gaza. Molavi's visit to Gaza offer insights into the farming that is allowed to exist under careful (meaning violent and dehumanising) gaze of Israeli authorities. Orange tree groves, a traditional feature of the Palestinian landscape, were mostly destroyed - firstly to create the dead zone near the border meant to allow vision for snipers to terrorise those who still live and work nearby, and secondly during the regular genocidal incursions that took place over recent decades. In the face of Israeli demands to limit tall agriculture that could block sniper fire, and also as a result of Israel depriving Gaza of the water needed to consistently profit off of traditional crops, Gaza farmers have adopted new crops such as strawberries.

Having provided an overview of the traditional Palestinian farming methods around Gaza, and their response to the colonial destruction and division of their land and livelihoods, Molavi then presents their research on Israeli pesticidal terror. That is, the methods by which Israel releases pesticide via planes flying along the Gaza border while the wind is blowing towards the Gaza strip - constraining the population in a genocidal concentration camp not being enough, the authorities wish to destroy the ability of Palestinians to shape their own landscapes and produce food.

Overall a very strong book containing lots of interesting analysis, including the close environmental analysis which I'm a fan of. It also had a surprising amount of valuable visual resources, such as an image collage of Palestinians wearing different homemade masks they'd created to mitigate the effects of Israeli tear gas.

[ℳanon ꫂ❀⋆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for the Palestinian struggle AND not only. With this book, you can watch WHY ecology CAN’T exist without decolonisation. Ecology has always been a anticapitalist struggle and gardening and farmers are the hot spots. The book is concise yet packed with documents and sources, read it carefully.

cf.: https://www.politis.fr/articles/2023/...

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdDFSLXT/

[NZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent work, really underlines how no act of resistance ever even comes close to the violence of the single most normal day under empire. This short thesis opens by illustrating how 'Gaza' is itself an ecology structured by the settler regime, ignoring and breaking existing ecological relationships/continuities throughout historic Palestine. Specifically, the focus is put on Gaza's trees and orchards:

Formerly made up of lush citrus, olive, pomegranate, and fig trees—orchards that served as a continuous link between Gaza and the rest of Palestine—the historical production of the border area and the buffer zone also involves strict controls by the occupation army of agricultural and crop cultivation. Palestinian farmers living and working along the border are prohibited by the Israeli military from growing crops over one meter high, meaning that the cultivation of any trees in these areas is routinely destroyed, with farmers forced to transition and plant other low-growing crops. As an area that forms the future architecture of the besieged Gaza Strip, the agricultural lands along its eastern border perimeter are fundamental to the food security of the civilian population. Historic transformations between 1970 to 2014 have led to the gradual clearing of these precious agricultural areas in Gaza, and the present-day production of its eastern frontier. Over time, and through multifaceted practices of settler-colonial occupation, the conditions of agriculture were forced to collude with the conditions of security.

Throughout this work, the landscape is utilized as a "silent witness" to Israel's construction of national identity through mythologies, claims to securities, and elimination of the 'lazy, ignorant' native. Of course, the native's own identity is tied into a relationship and ways of living with the shifting land, making their dispossession of physical space synonymous with a loss of cultural identity. As Palestine's historic landscape is disfigured by herbicides, encroaching borders, orchard razings, and forced transitions away from traditional crop growth/trade into new sectors (which are themselves regularly disrupted by Israeli encroachment on farms as far as 600m away from the border fences), so too are Palestinians, in regular acts to maiming or displacement from family land and history.

To highlight the links between landscape and colonial eco-imaginaries in Palestine, scholars have looked at the role of forests, and particularly the placement of trees in the formation of national identities and collective memories. As politicized entities, trees embody national ways of life, featuring regularly as a symbol of national identity and rootedness. Whether the English oak, Japanese cherry blossom, Canadian maple leaf, or the Lebanese cedar, trees, and the landscapes they create, often propel an ideological desire to physically alter a terrain to protect or maintain parts of national significance—making it appear as a “given and inevitable” natural reality and concealing its politically engineered origin. Landscapes create a sense of belonging among a people, producing their presence in the land as a natural fact, while excluding those rendered outside. In this manner, the ecoimaginary in Palestine has become a terrain of colonial struggle through the mobilizing of species of trees that reflect lived significances and collective memories: the pine within the Jewish national consciousness and the olive in the Palestinian. Indeed, the JNF’s preference for European-looking pine is not surprising given the historical matrix of European colonialism within which the Zionist movement emerged. Cultivating trees that conform to the picturesque Western ecological sensibilities further demonstrates Israel’s European-style environmental values, while also pushing forward a new historical narrative on the landscape that naturalizes a more ‘civilized’ colonial presence. And so, as a settler-colonial project, widespread afforestation of Palestinian orange and olive orchards across the country enabled the State of Israel to weaponize forests to erase Palestinian presence in strategically important spaces, providing camouflage for military objectives.

A light is also shone on the eco-imaginaries of Palestinians in Gaza, who use imagery such as orange and olive trees during acts of resistance, highlighted in this work through the example of 2018's Great March of Return, which itself physically demonstrated how the razed 'buffer zone' is denied as a communal area for Palestinians, and how the loss of tree cover in the area allows IOF snipers to mount campaigns of maiming and murder.

In the end the author writes in remembrance of their friend and co-researcher, Roshdi Yahya al-Sarraj, who was murdered by the IOF on October 22nd. Though he and his young family were in Makkah (presumably performing the Muslim pilgrimage) on October 7th, they returned quickly.

Growing up in Gaza and tasting previous Israeli wars, Shurouq and Roshdi knew the bloodshed and destruction that would unfold but returned anyway. Young, in love, talented, accomplished Palestinians with a child would rather come to Gaza to resist, document, and defend their homes than to live abroad.

[Louie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Israeli occupation and colonisation is so entrenched that for Palestinians in Gaza it is an act of resistance to even farm and tend to their land.

Brilliant short book on the ecological destruction of Gaza by the Zionist regime as part of their attempt to portray occupied Palestine as a scorched earth wasteland that is uninhabitable.

“The start of ‘Operation Al-Aqua Flood’ on 7 October 2024 by the military arm of Hamas mobilised the eco-colonial landscape that formed Gaza’s scorched periphery. Fighters crossed the flattened ‘border’ terrain by foot, and like the kites that were flown during the Great March years before, they openly flew across one of the most intensely surveillance part’s of the country on paragliders… While it remains unclear how the Israeli-produced eco-imaginary of the Gazan landscape will continue to be mobilised in the ongoing the indigenous liberation struggle, as long as this desire, conscious and tacit, to create a settler ecology out of the ecology of Palestine continues, novel and subversive frontiers of resistance to confront it will continue to blossom.”

[Inês Afonso · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apesar dos recursos limitados que presumo estas equipas de investigadores e jornalistas tenham, recomendo mesmo muito a leitura deste livro. Estamos habituados a conhecer a face mais visível de uma guerra ou genocídio, mas esta obra aborda uma vertente mais esquecida neste tipo de contexto. Há sempre espaço para nos indignarmos mais com o que acontece, assim como há sempre lugar para sentirmos orgulho e admiração pela resistência do povo palestiniano (e de todos os que lutam não apenas pela sua sobrevivência, mas também pela preservação da sua cultura).

Não dou cinco estrelas apenas porque, por vezes, alguns raciocínios parecem repetitivos. De resto, é uma leitura bastante acessível, mesmo para quem não tem conhecimento prévio sobre o tema.

"Young, in love, talented, accomplished Palestinians with a child would rather come to Gaza to resist, document, and defend their homes than to live abroad. And if only for such principles and commitments, it is clear that at the end of this struggle, Palestine will be free."

[Sara Sofea · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Taken from IG updates in year-end 2024)

1. Culture is deeply rooted in the produce that a society grows, where previously Gaza’s culture was intertwined with products like oranges, restricting (a) people's access to farmlands not only affects their economic livelihoods, but also access to heritage and possibly an identity.
2. Colonisation’s dagger hurts deepest through actions which could otherwise be justified as “necessary”. Eg restricting areas where Palestinians can farm for “security purposes”, land rights/access, aerial herbicide usage, dictating what crops Palestinians can grow.

[Mia Bornstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative account of how the IOF has weaponized the earth against the people of Palestine. Insightful on the history of the citrus trade in Gaza which has almost certainly been entirely destroyed by the time of reading this. The ways in which the IOF has razed orchards, sprayed pesticides, and poisoned groundwater have only expanded since.

[Nicole Sampaio · Rating 5 out of 5]

So well written. The research presented is very easy to follow and shows how the Israeli government has interfered with all aspects of Palestinian life. The last chapter discussing the Great March of Return was particularly impactful to me. Highly recommend

[Noah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Introduction and conclusion were stellar. The rest was pretty messy

[l robin s · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is so much more I think could’ve been written on this topic but I understand the difficulty of research. I’m specifically interested in the restriction of irrigation and water access

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

short but very good - deserves to be repeated globally with a wider scope

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horrifying picture of pre-2023 Gaza. Settler ecology harnessing modern technology.

[Amany Hannun · Rating 3 out of 5]

reflection weeks later
reading nonfiction frustrates me bc i learn a lot but nothing ends up sticking. the whole time I’m reading I feel a pressure to memorize everything otherwise what’s the point. The knowledge now sits in my body but can’t be put into words, random strings of ideas—names, concepts, and events—that only make sense to me in a fragmented way but don’t form a complete thought or argument. Oranges, invasive species, Jaffa, desertification — what does any of it mean now. Ask me to actually form a coherent argument or explanation and I can’t. All I gain from reading is a slight internal shift - am I supposed to be memorizing and studying everything I read? Or is it enough to just feel that I learned, even if it doesn’t result in knowledge that can be articulated. I’m frustrated it feels like I read for nothing sometimes. Fiction sticks with me longer but I don’t benefit much. Hmm annoying.