This speech is part of the ILPS Commission 6 Workshop held on the 22nd of June 2024 at Penang Malaysia. Hassan Al Jaajaa, APN (Arab Group for the Protection of Nature) Co-Founder, also served as one of the keynote speakers at the opening session of the 7th International Conference of the International League of Peoples’ Struggles (ILPS), attended by 500 participants from around the world. 

For a better understanding of what is happening in Palestine. It is important to state some historical facts: 

In 1897, the First Zionist Congress was held in Basel, Switzerland, to promote the implementation of Zionist goals, namely the creation of a home for the Jews in Palestine under public law. 

After assuming control in 1917, European colonial control by the British Mandate forced by the league of United Nations, played a significant role in the confiscation of Palestinian land. In 1917, Arthur James Balfour, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, wrote a letter known as the Balfour Declaration to one of Britain’s most influential Jewish citizens, Baron Rothschild. This letter expressed the government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Moreover, through the applied implementation of various legislations and laws, such as the Land Ownership Rights Settlement Law in 1928, the mandate aimed to privatize the 12 million dunums of communal lands. These measures facilitated the Zionist acquisition of large tracts of land from the newly established land market. Despite the favorable conditions provided for Zionist colonizers, by late 1940s, they only controlled approximately 7% of Palestinian territories.

All of these measures enabled the formation of the Settler-Colonial State of Israel in 1948. Since then, Israel continued to expand, capturing and occupying the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem in 1967.

To facilitate the expropriation of occupied land, thousands of acres of Palestinian agricultural land have been razed and uprooted by Israeli authorities and citizens.

Since 2006, 70% of the attacks on the agricultural sector in the West Bank have targeted olive and fruit trees, for their high cultural, economic, and political significance to the Palestinian people.

• Approximately 3 million trees have been uprooted or destroyed since the year 2000, the majority of which are olive trees. Sometimes at a rate of 1 tree per minute. 
• The construction of the Apartheid wall resulted in the uprooting of an estimated 100,000 trees, along with the displacement of hundreds of families and the severance of vital roads.
• Settlers continually attack Palestinian lands, resulting in the burning, vandalism, and poisoning of trees.
• An estimated 90% of Palestinian communities own olive groves within or around Israeli settlements and are frequently denied access to them by Israeli occupation authorities under the pretense of “security rationals”. 

Therefore, the destruction of agricultural land and restricted access to it are seen as using food as a weapon to induce starvation and subjugation. This poses an existential threat to Palestinian communities that depend on agriculture for their livelihood, as many farmers struggle to afford the resources necessary to restore their agricultural projects and replant their uprooted trees.

Palestinian communities now own less than 15% of the land of historic Palestine, represented by the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Of the remaining land, 60% of the West Bank is classified as “Area C” and is under full Israeli control and contains the majority of Palestine’s agricultural land.

The number of illegal settlers in the West Bank totals 726,000, distributed across 179 settlements and 186 settlement outposts. Jewish settlers now cultivate 120,000 dunams of Palestinian land. In 2022, the occupation authorities confiscated more than 26,000 dunams from Palestinians under various pretexts, such as declaring the areas nature reserves or state lands, among other reasons.

The land allocation according to Israel’s classification facilitates continuous exploitation of Palestine’s natural resources, namely through the restriction of Palestinian access to water.

• Israel denies Palestinians the right to use the waters of the Jordan River.
• Israel reserves the exclusive right to collect spring and rainwater for itself.
• Palestinian water extraction is limited to 17% of the share of the aquifers’ water, while Israel extracts the remaining 83% for settler use, consumption in Israel, or for sale back to Palestinians at inflated prices. 
• These discriminatory policies result in alarming disparities in water access between Palestinians and Israelis; settlers receive four times more water than Palestinians.

And now, let’s turn our attention to Gaza.

In 2007, the Israeli occupation of Gaza’s land, air, and sea, transformed into a blockade locking 2 million people away from the outside world. The blockade has destroyed public infrastructure, devastated food and agricultural imports, halted people’s movement, and has severely limited the delivery of basic utilities including water and electricity, where:

• The Israeli military has imposed “buffer zones” inside Gaza rendering 30–40% of the arable land inaccessible. 
• Israel restricts clean water from entering Gaza, while 97% of drinking water isn’t potable due to Israel’s bombing of water infrastructure and sanctions that ban building material for its rehabilitation. As a result, 50% of children have suffered from waterborne diseases caused by contaminated drinking water, with 12% of them passing away. 
• Despite the Oslo Accords giving them access to 20 nautical miles, the occupation imposed a similar buffer zone on fishermen, restricting them to 3-6 nautical miles, thus undermining the livelihoods of more than 4,000 fishermen. 
• The occupation launched a series of brutal wars aimed at undermining this sector and systematically dismantling local food systems. In 2008 alone, during a 21-day bombardment, 400,000 fruit trees were uprooted. In 2014, direct and indirect losses amounted to $550 million. In the Sword of Jerusalem battle in May 2021, agricultural sector losses reached over $200 million after 11 days.
• The occupation aimed to cause lasting harm to agricultural lands, infrastructure, soil, and water by periodically spraying chemical herbicides along the border strip and employing internationally banned prohibited weapons such as white phosphorus. 

The cruel blockade on Gaza represents one of the most atrocious forms of using food as a weapon and tool for collective pressure. This was expressed by Dov Weisglass, advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2006, when he said, “The idea (of the blockade) is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger”. Now, the goal is death by famine. 

To achieve this, the Zionist enemy devised a document in early 2008 outlining the minimum calorie intake required for Palestinians in Gaza to prevent immediate death from starvation, while still subjecting them to hunger. As a result, Israel limited the amount of food permitted to enter Gaza, despite media reports revealing the existence of this document. In 2022, following 14 years of employing this tactic, a series of reports were released categorizing 64.3% of Gazans as facing moderate to severe food insecurity.

Following the ongoing genocide, the occupation tightened its blockade on Gaza, closing all crossings and prohibiting the entry of aid trucks, which previously averaged around 500 trucks per day before. Long weeks passed without allowing any trucks to enter at all, or permitting only a few, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis and disrupting relief efforts. Prices skyrocketed sharply, in addition to the direct targeting of relief trucks, their crews, and civilians in their vicinity.

Since the onset of the war, the occupation has been targeting agricultural lands and facilities through airstrikes and subsequent bulldozing. 75% of Gaza’s agricultural sector has been destroyed. Meanwhile, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has evaluated the damages incurred by Gaza’s agricultural sector until February 2024, as follows:

• The destruction of 66,940 dunams of agricultural land in the sector, representing 42.6% of the cultivated agricultural area.
• The destruction of 3,390 dunams of plastic greenhouses (equivalent to 6,780 greenhouses), accounting for 26.6% of all greenhouses in the sector.
• The complete or partial destruction of 626 agricultural wells, primarily concentrated in the northern governorates.
• The obliteration of Gaza’s only port, along with a significant number of sheep and cattle sheds, as well as poultry and dairy farms.

This war has resulted in the worst famine since World War II. After 35 days of the war’s commencement, FAO announced that the entire population of about 2.2 million people is now facing acute hunger. Six months later, based on the IPC (Food Security Classification), 95% of Gazans are in food crises and 30% are in stage 5 defined as famine or catastrophe. 90% of children and 95% of pregnant and lactating women experience severe food poverty. Palestinians have resorted to eating tree leaves, grass, animal fodder, sometimes mixing it with soil. Women are unable to breastfeed due to malnutrition, and babies, the lucky ones, are being fed formula with water contaminated by sewage, toxins, and seawater.

The occupation, along with its armed settlers, exploited the world’s distraction, obstructing farmers’ access to their lands in the West Bank through intimidation. From October 7 to December 1, 2023, the Zionist assaults took various forms, including burning orchards and buildings, uprooting trees, stealing and destroying crops, equipment, and fodder, bulldozing Palestinian lands and infrastructure to build 13,000 new settlement units, blocking water sources, isolating and contaminating springs in Palestinian villages, destroying water infrastructure and solar panels, and even seizing livestock.

A total of 82,000 dunums (11%) of olive groves remained unharvested, as the settlers, backed by the occupation army, obstructed the harvesting of 1,977,615 trees in that area. Consequently, the Palestinian economy in the West Bank incurred a loss of $11,541,740.

To conclude, these historical and ongoing tactics illustrate a deliberate strategy to undermine Palestinian agriculture and food sovereignty, using land confiscation, resource exploitation, and direct violence to exert control and subjugation. The impact on Palestinian communities is profound, threatening their livelihoods and existence.

Thank you for your attention and solidarity.