Israel’s continuous bombardment has poisoned Gaza’s soil and environment
Garbage piles up near tents in Deir al-Balah, 17 August 2024
Rasha Jalal reports in The New Arab on 20 November 2024:
Khaled Marai, 34, from the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood west of Gaza City, was greatly disappointed after he tried to grow tomatoes and cucumbers to confront the famine prevailing in the northern Gaza Strip.
Marai, who has more than 20 years of agricultural experience, told The New Arab, “I tried to grow vegetable seedlings in my own nursery, and every time the seedlings wither and die despite my regular irrigation.” He explained that after conducting tests on the soil, it was found that it had become unsuitable for agriculture due to its severe contamination by chemicals from Israeli munitions.
Over the course of 13 months of bombing, the Israeli army dropped more than 85,000 tons of bombs on the Gaza Strip—equivalent to more than five times the power of the Hiroshima bomb dropped on Japan in 1945—causing widespread destruction of infrastructure and serious pollution of agricultural soil in the Gaza Strip, which will hinder agriculture for decades according to a statement issued by the Palestinian Environment Quality Authority.
Food insecurity for decades
Ashraf Al-Turk, an environmental expert at the Environment Quality Authority, told TNA that the ongoing Israeli raids since 7 October 2023, “led to the destruction of vast areas of agricultural land and the pollution of the soil with toxic chemicals that could threaten food insecurity for decades to come.”