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href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/israels-environmental-crisis-is-of-its-own-making/">http://www.palestinechronicle.com/israels-environmental-crisis-is-of-its-own-making/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Israel's 'Environmental Crisis' Is of
Its Own Making<br>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time">July 19, 2019<br>
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<p><strong>By <a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ramzy-baroud-romana-rubeo"
title="Display all articles for Ramzy Baroud &
Romana Rubeo">Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo</a></strong></p>
<p><span>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 <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/city/gaza.html"><span>Gaza</span></a> that
is sounding the alarm bells in Tel Aviv, but the
potential environmental damage Gaza’s ongoing misery
may cause <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/country/israel.html"><span>Israel</span></a>.</span></p>
<p><span>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 <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-environmental-state-of-gaza-poses-threat-to-israel-s-national-security-report-warns-1.7328966?=&ts=_1562070585006"><span>warned</span></a> 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.”</span></p>
<p><span>One would expect any <a
href="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"><span>report</span></a> 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 “<a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/gaza-uninhabitable-2020-israel-palestine-150902065427364.html"><span>uninhabitable
by 2020</span></a>“.</span></p>
<p><span>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 <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-environmental-state-of-gaza-poses-threat-to-israel-s-national-security-report-warns-1.7328966"><span>published</span></a> a
detailed report on the presentation, also spun the
issue as a matter of national security.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><strong><span>Polluting Gaza</span></strong></p>
<p><span>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 <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/organisations/un.html"><span>United
Nations</span></a> and other organizations have
documented in detail how and why the main culprit is
Israel, its violent assaults on Gaza and its merciless
siege.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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 <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/subjects/occupied-west-bank.html"><span>West
Bank</span></a>.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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 <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/gaza-drinking-water-spurs-blue-baby-syndrome-illnesses-181029110434881.html"><span>have
doubled</span></a>, reaching epidemic levels,
according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, while
salmonella and typhoid fever are also on the rise. </span></p>
<p><span>Then there is the problem with rubbish, which
Palestinians are burning and hence”polluting Israeli
air”. As Cambridge University academic Ramy Salemdeeb
has <a
href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260292772_Gaza's_Challenge_a_review_of_solid_waste_management_system_in_the_Gaza_Strip"><span>pointed
out</span></a>, 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. </span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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 <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/190328090907529.html"><span>cancer</span></a>. According
to the Red Cross, these activities not only damage
Palestinian crops but also contaminate the soil and
water.</span></p>
<p><span>Israel’s repeated bouts of heavy bombardment of
the Strip have also contributed to pollution. There is
evidence that the Israeli army has used <a
href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2015-003481_EN.html?redirect"><span>depleted
uranium </span></a>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.</span></p>
<p><span>Likewise, weapons <a
href="http://onlus.newweapons.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/London_2019_for_nwrg_EN.pdf"><span>used</span></a> 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.</span></p>
<p><strong><span>Colonialism and Environmental Destruction</span></strong></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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 “<a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/israel-engages-water-apartheid-171013110734930.html"><span>water
apartheid</span></a>“, 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.</span></p>
<p><span>Israel is also polluting Palestinian land by
literally using it as a dumping ground. It has been <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/201242811593745665.html"><span>estimated</span></a> 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.</span></p>
<p><span>Furthermore, over the past few years, Israel has
systematically moved polluting factories to the West
Bank. It has done so by <a
href="https://www.cjpme.org/fs_010"><span>building</span></a> 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.</span></p>
<p><span>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 <a
href="https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/gdsapp2015d1_en.pdf"><span>soil
erosion</span></a> and accelerated desertification
of parts of occupied Palestine.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><em>(This article was originally <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/israel-environmental-crisis-making-190702152022497.html">published</a>
in Al Jazeera)</em></p>
<p><i><span>– 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 </span></i><a
href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"><i><span>www.ramzybaroud.net</span></i></a></p>
<p><i><span>– 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. </span></i></p>
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