UNITED NATIONS, Oct 29 (IPS) – It was two weeks before October 7—when Hamas attacked Israel—when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood behind the podium in the United Nations General Assembly holding a dirty map of what he called the “new Middle East.” East,” which apparently erased the land of Palestine.
A year later, Israel’s war of revenge in Gaza has escalated, including the destruction of Palestinian agricultural lands, showing Netanyahu’s vision of a Middle East outside of Palestine closer to reality.
According to a recent report by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), “as of September 1, 2024, 67.6 percent of the land of Gaza was damaged,” and its major agricultural infrastructure, including “greenhouses, agricultural resources. and solar panels,” destroyed.
“There is no more agricultural sector,” said Hani Al Ramlawi, operations director of the Palestinian Agricultural Development Association (PARC). Ramlawi is from Gaza City but moved to Egypt six months after the conflict started.
Ramwali told IPS that in the past year, no agricultural products have reached the Strip. The ongoing shortage of water and electricity has made fuel, which is used to generate electricity and solar panels, more expensive and caused the cost of produce in local markets to increase. In northern Gaza, Ramlawi said that one kilogram of potatoes, about two pounds, costs $80, a kilogram of tomatoes is about $90 and a kilogram of garlic costs $200, and the prices fluctuate daily. Less than ten percent of farmers have access to their land, and the soil is “sick” due to ongoing military operations.
Everyone in Gaza is “food insecure,” Ramlawi said. In addition, the International Labor Organization (ILO), a UN agency, estimates that after a year of war, the unemployment rate in Gaza has risen to 80 percent.
The new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report found that between September and October. 2024, 1.84 million people or 90 percent of the entire Gaza Strip are facing severe levels of food insecurity. “The risk of starvation continues throughout Gaza,” the report said. “Due to the escalation of recent conflicts, there is growing concern that this worst-case scenario could occur.”
Hunger in Gaza, in the context of the conflict, is not unique—a UN expert group published a statement on October 17 warning that “97 percent of Sudan’s IDPs” are facing severe levels of hunger due to “starvation tactics” used by warring groups—but what is different about Gaza, said Michael Fakhri, UN special secretary for the right to food, “the speed” and “intensity” with which hunger has spread all of the Strip.
“This is the fastest famine we have seen in modern history,” said Fakhri. “How did Israel manage to starve 2.3 million people so quickly and so completely? It’s almost as if they flipped a switch or flipped a switch.”
What is happening in Gaza, according to Fakhri, is not at all a humanitarian crisis caused by a prolonged armed conflict but the result of decades of illegal land grabbing, forced evictions, punitive economic policies and the destruction of Palestinian crops — even with bulldozers. or the ever-expanding military-protected areas—by the Israeli government. Practices that began in the late nineteenth century, when the first wave of European Jews immigrated to Palestine, long before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
“There is a consistent line” that preceded the horror of October 7, Fakhri said. “What is happening today is not new,” he added, even if it is limited to the Gaza Strip.
Relatedly, in response to Fakhri’s recent report examining food and hunger in Palestine, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon sent a letter of complaint to Secretary-General António Guterres on October 17, asking him to withdraw Fakhri’s “disgraceful” and antisemitic report.
At that time in the West Bank, according to Ubai Al-Aboudi, the executive director of the Bisan Center for Research and Development – a Palestinian think tank based in Ramallah – the destruction of agricultural areas and the targeting of farmers, especially Israeli residents, “in order.”
“Now is the time for olives,” Al-Aboudi told IPS. “And we have this tradition; almost all Palestinian families in the West Bank have their own olive trees that they go to during the olive picking season.” But with increasing attacks on residents, residents are now working together, Al-Aboudi said, and harvest together to protect their fields, their farmers and each other.
According to estimates from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as of October 7, 2023, more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, nearly 100,000 injured and 1.9 million displaced. (OCHA relies on the Gaza Ministry of Health for the death toll.) However, a recent report in the Lancet, a weekly medical journal, suggests that the death toll in Gaza is likely much higher.
Although official statistics of the number of farmers killed in the Strip are not available, members of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), a Palestinian NGO in Gaza, estimate that since Oct. 7, no less than 500 farmers about 30,000 have been killed.
“You know, the farmers and their families face the same thing that we see in all people,” said Mahmoud Alsaqqa in a telephone interview with IPS. Alsaqqa leads Oxfam in food security and livelihoods. Based in Deir Al-Balah.
But, for the remaining farmers, accessing their fields, most of which are located on the eastern edge of the Strip near the Israeli border, means risking death or sustaining life-changing injuries. “They easily turn to the military,” Alsaqqa said. And when farmers are killed, their decades of agricultural knowledge dies with them.
“There is serious concern about the challenge of rebuilding the information base in Gaza,” the UAWC told IPS. “Many universities have been destroyed, and this creates great fear about the re-establishment of educational and agricultural technology in the region.”
Still, despite ongoing conflicts and a sharp reduction in humanitarian aid, as of October 7, Alsaqqa and Oxfam say many Palestinians rely on urban or home agriculture to support their families and others in need.
Before the war, Bisan Okasha’s home garden in the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza was full of olives, palm and banana trees, citrus fruits, grapes and mint and basil seedlings. However, after October 7, when his house and garden were destroyed and threatened with famine, Okasha’s father, determined to rebuild, removed the debris from their land and planted 70 eggplant seedlings in a mound of soil that covered the pieces of eggplant. their home.
The effort was “successful,” Okasha said in a series of documents with IPS. The experience left him inspired, and soon after, Okasha, despite being fired three times, created Seeds of Resilience, a community-driven initiative designed to revitalize and establish home gardens in the north by providing and planting free seedlings and seeds. . So far, Okasha and her team—all volunteers—have planted eggplant, cauliflower, peppers, and chilies in dozens of home gardens.
“My father’s attempt to change the reality we lived in is what made me believe that I can create change in our entire society and take a real and effective step to prepare the people of Northern Gaza for any future crisis that may threaten their lives. you live,” said Okasha.
“Wars and disasters in this world are not kind to souls,” he added.
According to the FAO report, of the five districts of Gaza, Northern Gaza, where the Jabalia camp is located, has the largest proportion of damaged areas at 78 percent. Khan Younis has a large amount of damaged agricultural infrastructure—animal shelters, home barns, agricultural houses, and cattle farms—whereas the state of Gaza has a large number of damaged wells, reducing water availability. Relatedly, OCHA estimates that more than 70,000 houses have been destroyed throughout Gaza.
Israel’s mission to the UN, based in New York, declined to comment on the FAO report, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not respond.
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
