Mapping the case for Israel's 'ecocide' in Gaza

On October 7, 2023, Dr. He Yin was teaching a remote sensing course to students at Kent State University when he learned about the Hamas-led armed incursion into Israel. He immediately switched his lab exercise from mapping wildfires in the United States to looking at burned areas in Israel. But when the Israeli military launched its full-scale ground invasion on October 27, Yin's attention shifted to Gaza.

Speaking to TRT World, he said he was horrified by what he found. By the end of October, approximately seven percent of Gaza's farmland had likely been damaged. In March, that figure rose to a staggering 48 percent, or nearly half of Gaza's tree cover. Now, based on his latest assessment from July, Yin said that over 60 percent of Gaza's agricultural fields have been damaged or destroyed, including greenhouses and tree crops like strawberries and olives.

“I don't believe I've encountered anything like it before in conflict zones. It reminded me of events I read about from World War II.”

According to some environmentalists, such devastation should be punishable by international law. That's why some activists are pushing the United Nations' top court to consider Israel's actions against Gaza's agriculture sector as a war crime.

Unprecedented warfare

In 2011, Yin looked into the effects of armed conflict on agricultural land in Syria, using 30-metre Landsat imagery. For Gaza, he used 3-metre Planetscope imagery, since the field sizes were smaller.

He found the scale of destruction in Gaza to be "much more severe."

"The nature of the damage is also different. In Syria, while some areas were directly affected by warfare, much of the damage stemmed from indirect factors like the lack of electricity, seeds, fertilisers, and water, which led to land abandonment. In Gaza, most of the damage is direct, caused by fighting, bombings, and bulldozing."

Yin's findings correspond with data provided by UNOSAT, the United Nation's satellite centre. In its latest report, UNOSAT estimated that approximately 68 percent of Gaza's cropland experienced "significant decline" due to "razing, heavy vehicle activity, bombing, shelling, and other conflict-related dynamics."

In addition, there has been widespread damage to agricultural infrastructure, including roads, energy sources, wells, and irrigation networks.

The Israeli military denies targeting agricultural lands. But satellite imagery by independent researchers and ground testimonials say otherwise.

Food insecurity

The widespread destruction of Gaza's agricultural land has severely impacted the population's access to food. Locally sourced vegetables and other food products are simply no longer available, said Mahmoud Alsaqqa, head of the food security and livelihood program at Oxfam Gaza Response.

Speaking to TRT World, Alsaqqa said, "We used to help farmers and breeders improve the quality of their produce, while also promoting innovative ideas to address climate change challenges through new practices and technologies. Sadly, we are now simply fighting to survive and protect what's left."

Originally from Gaza City, Alsaqqa has been displaced twice. Last month, he visited northern Gaza, where he met some of his colleagues, along with other displaced people. "The exhaustion and fatigue was evident on their faces. It was clear how much weight they had lost," he added.

According to the UN, approximately 96 percent of the population of Gaza face high levels of acute food insecurity, while 22 percent of the population (or 495,000 people) are facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity.

Destroying the environment has also hurt the economy.

In 2021, agriculture made up more than 10.5 percent of Gaza's GDP and accounted for two-thirds of its tradable GDP (UNEP 2024). It was also the region's main export source, comprising over 45 percent of all exports (PCBS 2023). In 2022, the agricultural sector in Gaza was valued at approximately $575 million, with 54 percent of that attributed to plant production.

"Nearly all agricultural areas in northern Gaza have been devastated," Alsaqqa said. "Beit Lahiya's famous strawberry fields have been wiped out; hundreds of dunums of olive trees have been destroyed. This is not just an attack on our land, but also an assault on our Palestinian identity and olive-growing heritage."

Since October, the London-based research team at Forensic Architecture has been documenting the systematic destruction of farmland and orchards owned by farmers in Gaza. That includes a now-displaced farmer named Abu Suffiyeh and his neighbours in East Jabaliya, which overlooks a militarised Israeli buffer zone.

The team developed a framework of documentation which includes on-ground testimonials, along with remote sensing, open-source intelligence, 3D modelling, and cartographic regression. This is the process of overlaying historical data such as maps and photographs onto contemporary imagery to track changes.

"Palestine has always been important to our work," said Samaneh Moafi, the assistant director of research at Forensic Architecture.

Speaking to TRT World, she added that the team got involved in Gaza in 2018 after farmers asked them to investigate Israel's use of herbicides along the eastern border.

"This practice has destroyed entire swaths of arable land. It was killing crops and farmlands hundreds of metres deep into Palestinian territory, resulting in the loss of livelihoods for Gazan farmers," she said.

Last year, the same farmers asked Forensic Architecture about the land they are now displaced from. "They had heard that their farms were destroyed by the Israeli military, and since they were unable to return and see it for themselves, they asked us what we found in satellite imagery."

Between November 2023 and June 2024, the team found that the majority of Palestinian farmland within 1km of the eastern perimeter of Gaza had been cleared—including Abu Suffiyeh's beloved olive, pomegranate and citrus orchards. In its place, a new Israeli military corridor was being paved: “the so-called Netzarim Corridor.”

Case for ecocide in international courts

Presently, Israel faces charges of genocide in front of the UN's top court, the International Court of Justice.

One dimension of this is the widespread destruction to the environment, which environmentalists say should be prosecuted as an international crime.

Since the 1970s, activists have been pushing for "ecocide" to be defined under international law as "extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been or will be severely diminished."

Environmental experts say flattening a land is akin to erasing the history of the people who lived on it, the evidence of their existence. This could be how the crime of ecocide ties in with the genocide of the Palestinian people.

According to Moafi, Israel's actions in Gaza are "a deliberate act of ecocide and a critical dimension of Israel's genocidal campaign."

Her team's investigation has been cited as evidence by the South African team in its case against Israel at the ICJ.

“Environmental violence may be slow and defused, but it is often enmeshed in colonial, corporate and military violence. This intersection defines our approach to investigations on environmental destruction,” Moafi said.