Gaza Turning To Desert
And Ukraine to a toxic waste dump. That’s what war does to Nature.
Published in An Injustice!
Wartime landscape Image: al-Monitor
“Wars destroy habitats, kill wildlife, generate pollution and remake ecosystems entirely, with consequences that ripple through the decades.” New York Times June 22 2023
If you have been following the horrifying news from Palestine, you have seen pictures of cities turned to rubble and human bodies blown apart. These images rightly grab our attention, so you might not have noticed the other devastating pictures of soldiers marching or driving through acres of sand and dirt in Gaza, landscapes with barely a leaf of non-military life.
Image al-Jazeera
Gaza was not always a desert. It had been a beautiful place for centuries, a tourist destination for rich people from ancient Egypt to Ottoman Turkey to modern Europe. Much of that time, it was flourishing, famous for its citrus fruits and seafood restaurants. In the Bible, God called it — when it was part of the land of Canaan — ‘a land flowing with milk and honey.’ (Numbers 14:8 and Exodus3:8)
Thousands if species of animals and plants lived there, and in the rest of Palestine. A recent survey by the Palestinian Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) found 551 species of birds, 130 species of mammals, 97 species of reptiles, 8 species of amphibians, and 13,000 species of invertebrates living in Palestine, about 3% of the world total, many of them in Gaza.
At the intersection of Asia, Europe, and Africa, Palestine has been classed by the UN as a biodiversity hotspot, but Gaza (a province of 125 square miles) is not so biodiverse anymore.
Gaza has been the site of numerous wars, with empires including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, and British conquering and being conquered, and peoples like the Israelites and Philistines invading in search of land. These wars hurt the land and its inhabitants, but Dr. Mazin Qumsayeh of PIBS told me that, “Most of the biodiversity loss happened since 1948 and is directly related to colonization.”
The current Israeli assault on Gaza is the worst war they have ever had. Israel’s stated goal is to make Gaza unlivable, forcing every inhabitant to flee or die. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on October 8, “We will turn Gaza into an island of ruins.” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari told media, “The focus is on destruction, not accuracy.” Likud Party leader Tally Gotliv tweeted, “Powerful rockets to be fired without limits or borders. Gaza to be smashed and razed to the ground. Without mercy.”
On December 1, journalist Chris Hedges confirmed that Netanyahu was telling the truth. “Gaza is to become a wasteland,” he wrote, “a dead zone that will be incapable of sustaining life.” They have destroyed the cities with bombs and have attacked the farmland and greenhouses with bulldozers to deny Palestinians food.
Tanks bulldozing farmland. Some plants still alive. Image: New Arab
They are flooding the massive tunnel system under Gaza with sea water. This may actually be a military action, not just a way to murder civilians by bombing them, but scientists say sea water could well turn the water table too salty to drink or grow plants. Toxic chemicals will leach into the ground water from military supplies in the tunnels.
Writing for the Century Foundation, science writer Zeineb Shuker said, “Gaza’s environmental resources are being poisoned, depleted, or otherwise destroyed, and may take generations to recover.” He called the IDF program “salting the Earth,” and many other writers have used that term, referencing what ancient Rome did to Carthage to make the city unlivable.
But you can’t render a place unlivable for some people and expect it to be life-giving to your own people. It’s a desert for everyone now.
Military operations damage land for the long term, even when that is not their intent. The Watson Institute at Brown University wrote about the effects of war in Iraq:
“Military vehicles have produced many hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and sulfur dioxide in addition to CO2. Air pollution from military vehicles and weaponry has adversely affected public health among civilians in the war zones and US service members.”
“Heavy military vehicles have raised more dust than usual, and service members’ exposures to inhaled toxins from that dust cause respiratory disorders that often prevent them from performing everyday activities.” Imagine what it does to the people and animals who live there every day. That’s the situation for people and animals in Gaza now.
The Watson Institute goes on, “The water supply in the war zones has been contaminated by oil from military vehicles and depleted uranium (DU) from ammunition. Along with the degradation of the natural resources in these countries and a radical destruction of forest cover, the animal and bird populations have been adversely affected.”
Ukraine going toxic
It’s too early to know the long term environmental damage of the Ukraine war, but it’s considerable.
The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) issued a report in 2022, saying, “The screening of environmental hazards serves to confirm that war is quite literally toxic. The first priority is for this senseless destruction to end now…Ukraine will then need huge international support to assess, mitigate and remediate the damage across the country, and alleviate risks to the wider region.”
That was 14 months ago. The destruction has not ended. Bombs are dropping; tanks are crushing soils and wetlands. DU weapons fill large regions with radioactive waste. Exploded bombs leave toxic residues. Unexploded land mines and cluster bombs endanger all who live there and walk on the Earth.
Who’s to blame? In Gaza, one can pretty much blame the US for providing the bombs and tanks, and blame Israel for using them on civilians. In Ukraine one could blame Russia for starting the war and NATO/US for pushing them into it. But to me, the real villains, the ones that have to be confronted and shut down, are the military industrial corporations (MIC.)
Israel has dropped dozens of 2000 pound Mark 84 bombs on Northern Gaza cities and refugee camps, many of them killing hundreds of innocent civilians apiece. When they used up their supply, the US immediately sent them more, knowing they would be dropped on refugees in Southern Gaza, where some have already been exploded.
Nobody seems to have asked any questions about whether Israel should have received these genocidal bombs. Why would they ask, when all those bombs and dead bodies put millions of dollars in the corporate accounts of bomb-maker General Dynamics and other MIC corporations, paid for with US tax money? Why wouldn’t the US sabotage peace negotiations in Ukraine when the war is making bank for the MIC?
If we want to have any hope of restoring Earth in its multiple crises, we need to stop the MIC. They’ve turned Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other countries into wastelands. Ukraine is getting there. The military are the world’s #1 contributor to global warming. They leave behind pools of toxic chemicals wherever they go. They kill people on purpose. Animals and plants are collateral damage.
Soil, wetlands, forests and rivers are degraded so they support far less life. And we totally, 100% need that life to keep our beautiful planet Earth alive. Stop the war on Gaza now. Tear down the MIC forever. For today, contact Congress 202–225–3121, the Senate 202–224–3121, and the White House 202–456–1111 to demand a ceasefire in Gaza now.
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