Ecocide in Gaza
JVL Introduction
The damage in Gaza is almost unfathomable, the fabric of the entire area, urban and rural, utterly devastated.
This analysis of what has happned in the countryside is part of an important Guardian series “The Age of extinction”.
It shows the extent of the destruction as never before: nearly 50 percent of tree cover and farmland gone, olive groves and farms reduced to packed earth, soil and groundwater contaminated, the sea choked with sewage and waste, the air polluted by smoke and particulates.
The Geneva conventions’ injunction against warfare that causes “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment” has been trampled on.
This article is accompanied by a number of hauntingly evocative, heart-breaking photos – make sure you go to the original to see them.
RK
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Fri 29 Mar 2024. Read the original here.
‘Ecocide in Gaza’: does scale of environmental destruction amount to a war crime?
Satellite analysis revealed to the Guardian shows farms devastated and nearly half of the territory’s trees razed. Alongside mounting air and water pollution, experts says Israel’s onslaught on Gaza’s ecosystems has made the area unlivable
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This is nothing less than a “scorched earth policy’ – banned when used against non-combatants under the 1977 Geneva Convention:
“It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.”
The policy has been used for thousands of years – Wiki provides some historic examples, the earliest of which is from the 6th century BC when the Scythians used it against the Persians.
It is clearly deliberate destuction. It is genocide plus a lot more.
I stopped my Guardian subs because of their pro-Zionist, anti -Palestinian articles some 18-20 months ago. It is a bit late in the day to complain about Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity now that they really cannot be ignored or denied.