[News] Israel's destruction of the environment in Palestinian territories is now threatening Israeli lives

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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>