Israel: Making the Holy Land burn

A month into this year’s olive harvest season, Israeli settlers and soldiers have already damaged or uprooted 4,500 olive trees in the occupied West Bank. Since January, they have destroyed 100,000 olive trees. In Gaza, since October 2023, 97 percent of Gaza’s two million olive oil trees have been wiped out. Between 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank, and the 2010s, it had destroyed more than 800,000.

I think of the devastating sight of uprooted trees in my grandfather’s olive grove every time I hear news of Israel sending yet another delegation to a climate, biodiversity, or desertification conference to boast of its “unique expertise” in “making the desert bloom” – a myth it has long propagated.

The destruction of olive trees is just one aspect of Israel’s broader war on the Palestinian land, from its vegetation and soil to its water and ecosystems. Since the Nakba of 1948, Israeli colonial policies have extended beyond land seizure and the displacement of its inhabitants to reshaping the natural landscape, undermining its capacity to sustain those who have lived on and cultivated it for generations.

In other words, contrary to its greenwashing claims, Israel made a blooming Palestine burn.

When the first Zionist settlers started coming to Palestine in the late 19th century, what they found was “a desert” that was already blooming. Palestinian land was producing not only enough food to feed its people but also to export to neighbouring regions within the Ottoman Empire and even across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Palestinians were growing wheat, barley and oats and harvesting olive and fruit trees. Closer to the Mediterranean coast, lush gardens produced various vegetables and fruit. In the more arid Naqab desert in the south, Bedouin tribes tended to herds of sheep, goats and camels, producing meat, milk and wool.

Palestinians co-existed with the various ecosystems they occupied: from wetlands to the dry desert. They tended to the land using techniques that reflected local conditions rather than seeking to engineer them. Local drought-resistant crops were grown in drier areas and more irrigation-dependent ones in valleys closer to water sources.

By contrast, Zionist settlers coming from Europe sought to reshape Palestine’s landscape to what was familiar to them. They planted trees imported from Europe, such as the stone pine, in some cases uprooting native species, including olive trees. They drained swamps, rerouted streams and tried to afforest desert landscapes.

Some of these activities had disastrous consequences for local ecosystems, including the introduction of non-native plants such as the eucalyptus, which burns easily and which has contributed to a higher frequency and intensity of wildfires.

Israel’s efforts to reshape the natural landscape were driven by the desire to erase Palestinian presence. Trees were planted over the remains of pillaged Palestinian villages to cover them up. Imported European-style agriculture wiped out native Palestinian techniques that had produced food for centuries.

The Zionist assault on the Palestinian land did not stop at the 1948 boundaries. As soon as the Israeli army occupied the West Bank and Gaza, it put under martial rule not just the people but also their natural resources.

Water has been at the centre of this process. As illegal settlements spread in the occupied territories, settlers started taking over local water resources. Today, Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, is responsible for running an extensive water system that reroutes water from Palestinian towns and villages to the Israeli settlements. It often cuts off water to Palestinians in the summer to ensure a steady supply to the illegal settlers.

This water theft has devastated Palestinian agriculture and ecosystems.

Meanwhile, land theft has featured not only violence against the Palestinian people but also against their soil. For years, the Israeli army and settlers have sprayed Palestinian land with pesticides to discourage farmers from working their fields. Meanwhile, burning and uprooting of trees and other vegetation, as well as settler construction, have damaged the soil and led to erosion.

In Gaza, ecocide has been taken to the extreme. The genocidal war unleashed on the Gaza Strip has devastated agricultural land, trees, soil and water.

These harms are compounded by bombardment and bulldozing. Israel has destroyed approximately 85 percent of buildings in the Gaza Strip, leaving an estimated 70 million tonnes of rubble containing various toxins. Israeli bombardment has dispersed heavy metals, including lead, cadmium, arsenic, tungsten and aluminium, as well as explosive compounds such as TNT, RDX and perchlorates.

These substances seep into the soil and groundwater, causing environmental damage whose effects may persist for years.

Meanwhile, the continuing bulldozing of buildings and land has stripped away the topsoil, which is rich in organic matter and nutrients essential for plant growth, further degrading agricultural land.

The paradox here is that the Israelis who claim to have an ancient right to the land are the very same people who damage and destroy it. This is highly surprising.

A coloniser sees land as something to capture, possess and exploit. The colonial relationship to land is one of abuse for the sake of material benefit. It is not care. It is not stewardship. It is not belonging.

The Israeli approach to Palestinian land – poison and destroy in order to control – contrasts sharply with the Palestinian one. Since 1948, Palestinians have faced constant attacks, destruction, theft of resources, pillaging. And yet, they have sought to rebuild, replant and rework over and over again.

My own grandfather, Hamdan, is an example of this Palestinian spirit. For four decades he looked over an eight-dunam olive grove that produced 1,500kg of olive oil each season.

During the 2008 war, the Israeli army bulldozed the grove. My grandfather did not relent. He replanted olive trees with my help. Just as the grove was beginning to recover, the Israeli army destroyed it again during the 2014 war.

For my grandfather, the olive trees were more than a livelihood. He saw them as his children, the fruit of years of care and his family’s bond to the land. Less than a week after their destruction in 2014, my grandfather died from the shock.

We did not relent either. My family set out to restore and replant the land with olive trees in 2015, which took several months. The trees then took three years to bear fruit. We managed to harvest olives for two seasons before the Israeli army bombed the grove during the 2021 war.

The land was so damaged that it was no longer suitable for olive cultivation. Clearing the contamination and burying the bomb craters took a long time, but we still managed to plant some of the land with seasonal crops like wheat. Then in December 2023, the Israeli army devastated the grove again.

I would be replanting that land again today if it didn’t lie beyond the ever-expanding “Yellow Line”.

That drive to tend to land is so deeply ingrained in Palestinians that even in the camps for the displaced, people are keeping small gardens in front of their tents, planting mint, basil and flowers.

Despite all the propaganda and greenwashing Israel deploys, it is increasingly clear to the world who can make the Holy Land bloom. It is not those who destroy, poison and bulldoze. It is those who are deeply rooted, who plant, grow and care. Those are the true owners of the land.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.