Israel: Making the Holy Land burn

Detailed summary

For all its greenwashing, the Zionist state has ecologically devastated Palestine more than anyone else.

A month into this year’s olive harvest season, Israeli settlers and soldiers have already damaged or uprooted 4,500 olive trees in the occupied West Bank. 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. Between 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank, and the 2010s, it had destroyed more than 800,000.

I think of the devastating sight of uprooted trees in my grandfather’s olive grove every time I hear news of Israel sending yet another delegation to a climate, biodiversity, or desertification conference to boast of its “unique expertise” in “making the desert bloom” – a myth it has long propagated.

The destruction of olive trees is just one aspect of Israel’s broader war on the Palestinian land, from its vegetation and soil to its water and ecosystems. Since the Nakba of 1948, Israeli colonial policies have extended beyond land seizure and the displacement of its inhabitants to reshaping the natural landscape, undermining its capacity to sustain those who have lived on and cultivated it for generations.

In other words, contrary to its greenwashing claims, Israel made a blooming Palestine burn.

When the first Zionist settlers started coming to Palestine in the late 19th century, what they found was “a desert” that was already blooming. Palestinian land was producing not only enough food to feed its people but also to export to neighbouring regions within the Ottoman Empire and even across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Palestinians were growing wheat, barley and oats and harvesting olive and fruit trees. Closer to the Mediterranean coast, lush gardens produced various vegetables and fruit. In the more arid Naqab desert in the south, Bedouin tribes tended to herds of sheep, goats and camels, producing meat, milk and wool.

Palestinians co-existed with the various ecosystems they occupied: from wetlands to the dry desert.

By contrast, Zionist settlers coming from…

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