[News] Israel's destruction of the environment in Palestinian territories is now threatening Israeli lives
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Jul 19 15:38:13 EDT 2019
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/israels-environmental-crisis-is-of-its-own-making/
Israel's 'Environmental Crisis' Is of Its Own Making
July 19, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*By Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo
<http://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ramzy-baroud-romana-rubeo>*
Gaza’s growing humanitarian crisis is finally registering in Israel as a
pressing problem requiring “clear and immediate” action. However, it is
not the impact of the crisis on the population of Gaza
<https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/city/gaza.html> that is sounding the
alarm bells in Tel Aviv, but the potential environmental damage Gaza’s
ongoing misery may cause Israel
<https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/country/israel.html>.
On June 3, researchers from Israel’s Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion
universities presented a report, commissioned by the environmental
organisation EcoPeace Middle East, in which they warned
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-environmental-state-of-gaza-poses-threat-to-israel-s-national-security-report-warns-1.7328966?=&ts=_1562070585006> that
“the collapsing water, sewage, and electricity infrastructure in the
Gaza Strip pose a material danger to Israel’s groundwater, seawater,
beaches and desalination plants.”
One would expect any report
<https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.northwestern.edu/dist/0/2215/files/2018/06/Gidon-NW_Israeli-Water-Diplomacy-and-National-Security-Concerns-PPT-2glifjo.pdf> on
the environmental situation in Gaza to focus on the fact that nearly two
million Palestinians in the Strip are living in inhumane conditions due
to a relentless 12-year Israeli blockade and repeated devastating
military assaults, which are rending the area “uninhabitable by 2020
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/gaza-uninhabitable-2020-israel-palestine-150902065427364.html>“.
Instead, the report has implied that the local residents are solely
responsible for the imminent environmental catastrophe in Gaza which is
threatening the security and wellbeing of Israeli citizens. Israeli
newspaper Haaretz, which published
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-environmental-state-of-gaza-poses-threat-to-israel-s-national-security-report-warns-1.7328966> a
detailed report on the presentation, also spun the issue as a matter of
national security.
But what Israel has now identified as a “national security problem” is
indeed a disaster of its own making. The occupation, colonization,
dispossession, and aggression against Palestine and the Palestinians
have caused so much environmental damage that now even the Israeli
occupier is suffering.
*Polluting Gaza*
The environmental situation in Gaza is indeed dire at the moment, but it
is not the Palestinians who made it so. Neither the “rapid population
growth”, nor neglect or ignorance of local residents that are its root
causes. Countless reports by the United Nations
<https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/organisations/un.html> and other
organizations have documented in detail how and why the main culprit is
Israel, its violent assaults on Gaza and its merciless siege.
Take the problem of untreated sewage ending up in the sea, which is
causing problems for Israeli beach-goers and water desalination plants.
The reason why Gaza’s sewage is getting disposed of in this
“irresponsible” way is that water treatment plants are not operational;
they were targeted in the 2014 Israeli assault on the Strip and were
never rebuilt because the Israeli siege does not allow for construction
materials and spare parts to be brought in.
Untreated sewage is part of the larger water crisis in Gaza. As the
report rightly points out, Gaza residents are overusing the aquifer
under the Strip, which has become increasingly contaminated with
seawater and chemicals and which constitutes the only source of fresh
water for local residents because of the involuntary separation between
the West Bank
<https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/subjects/occupied-west-bank.html>.
The reason why Palestinians in Gaza are unable to establish a proper
water management system is again not their fault. Israel has repeatedly
bombed its water infrastructure, including water pipes, wells, and other
facilities, and the debilitating Israeli siege has prevented the local
authorities from fixing it and building a water desalination plant.
Gaza’s water problem is not only an annoyance for the Israelis but a
potential source of an epidemic for the Palestinians. Already diarrheal
diseases have doubled
<https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/gaza-drinking-water-spurs-blue-baby-syndrome-illnesses-181029110434881.html>,
reaching epidemic levels, according to the Palestinian Ministry of
Health, while salmonella and typhoid fever are also on the rise.
Then there is the problem with rubbish, which Palestinians are burning
and hence”polluting Israeli air”. As Cambridge University academic Ramy
Salemdeeb has pointed out
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260292772_Gaza's_Challenge_a_review_of_solid_waste_management_system_in_the_Gaza_Strip>,
Gaza has been unable to develop a proper waste management system because
of economic restrictions due to the Israeli siege and a “limited land
availability” because of its isolation from the rest of the occupied
Palestinian territories.
What the Israeli report does not mention is that beyond sewage and
rubbish problems, Gaza is also suffering from a variety of other
environmental disasters, which are again linked to the Israeli
occupation and aggression against the Palestinians.
The Israeli army regularly sprays herbicide on Palestinian arable land
close to the fence separating the besieged territory from Israel. The
chemical it uses most often is glyphosate, which has been proven to
cause cancer
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/190328090907529.html>. According
to the Red Cross, these activities not only damage Palestinian crops but
also contaminate the soil and water.
Israel’s repeated bouts of heavy bombardment of the Strip have also
contributed to pollution. There is evidence that the Israeli army has
used depleted uranium
<http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2015-003481_EN.html?redirect>and
white phosphorus in its assaults on Gaza, which not only cause immediate
harm to civilian populations but also remain a source of health risk
long after the bombardment has stopped.
Likewise, weapons used
<http://onlus.newweapons.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/London_2019_for_nwrg_EN.pdf> in
Israeli military operations have contaminated the environment in Gaza
with heavy metals like tungsten, mercury, cobalt, barium, and cadmium,
which are known to cause cancer, birth defects, infertility, etc.
*Colonialism and Environmental Destruction*
That Israel, which prides itself on supposedly “making the desert bloom”
is responsible for a major environmental disaster in that same “desert”
is hardly surprising. Given that it is a settler-colonial project, the
(over)exploitation of the colonized land to the detriment of the
environment and the local population is naturally a part of its modus
operandi.
Indeed, all the land Israel has taken and occupied has suffered from
environmental degradation in one way or another, with its harmful
effects being conveniently shifted towards Palestinians land, villages,
and cities.
Israel’s aggressive settlement-building practices have not only
uprooted, segregated and dispossessed hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians but have also harmed the environment. They have led to
excessive consumption of water, which has not only diminished
significantly the access to water for Palestinians – leading some to
talk about “water apartheid
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/israel-engages-water-apartheid-171013110734930.html>“,
but it has also depleted water resources in general. Aggressive use of
water for agriculture – much of it run by illegal settlers in the West
Bank – has led to the depletion of aquifers and a sharp decline in water
levels in the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River.
Israel is also polluting Palestinian land by literally using it as a
dumping ground. It has been estimated
<https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/201242811593745665.html> that
some 80 percent of the rubbish generated by Israeli settlements is being
dumped in the West Bank. Various Israeli industries and the army are
also known to discard toxic waste on Palestinian land.
Furthermore, over the past few years, Israel has systematically moved
polluting factories to the West Bank. It has done so by building
<https://www.cjpme.org/fs_010> so-called “industrial zones” which not
only use cheap Palestinian labor but also release their toxic byproducts
into the environment without regard to the wellbeing of Palestinians
living nearby.
Israel has also continued its decade-long practice of uprooting
Palestinian olive and fruit tree groves. This strategy, meant to sever
the connection Palestinians have to their land, has not only resulted in
the loss of livelihood for thousands of Palestinian farmers but also
caused soil erosion
<https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/gdsapp2015d1_en.pdf> and
accelerated desertification of parts of occupied Palestine.
All of these activities damaging the environment in which the
Palestinian people live are accumulating over time. Today they are
endangering Palestinian lives, but tomorrow they will threaten Israeli
lives as well.
If Israel continues to treat the issue as a “security problem” it will
never get resolved because at the heart of it is the destructive logic
of a colonial enterprise which seeks to exploit both land and people
with no regard for nature and human wellbeing.
In other words, Israel will never achieve security – environmental or
otherwise – as long as it continues to oppress the Palestinians, occupy
their land and ravage the environment. Israeli air, water, and overall
environment will never be immune from the Israeli-made disasters in
occupied Palestine.
/(This article was originally published
<https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/israel-environmental-crisis-making-190702152022497.html>
in Al Jazeera)/
/– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author, and editor of Palestine
Chronicle. His last book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto
Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the
University of Exeter and was a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center
for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa
Barbara. His website is //www.ramzybaroud.net/ <http://www.ramzybaroud.net/>
/– Romana Rubeo is an Italy-based writer and an editor at the
PalestineChronicle.com. Rubeo holds a Master’s Degree in Foreign
Languages and Literature and specializes in Audio-Visual and Journalism
Translation. /
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20190719/af267cb0/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list