The war between Israel and Hamas has devastated Gaza in ways that may be irreversible, and the picture of environmental damage is only beginning to emerge as violence spreads across the region.
Israel dropped thousands of bombs, destroying most of Gaza's trees and agricultural land, as well as buildings, leaving behind toxic garbage, and destroying water and sanitation infrastructure. Greenhouse gas emissions are rising from explosions, military vehicles and foreign arms shipments.
As fighting in Lebanon and tensions between Israel and Iran continue to escalate, so do concerns about the war's impact on the climate and environment.
“The intensity of this is much greater than we have seen before – because it has been going on for so long, because it was a deliberate effort to cause very serious damage in Gaza,” said Doug Weir, UK director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory, an advocacy group to raise awareness of the environmental consequences of war.
Destruction of agricultural land
The environment cannot escape the damage caused by wars taking place around the world, which almost always result in significant pollution and destruction of wildlife habitats, with consequences lasting for generations. Scientists have expressed similar concerns about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, which is taking place over a larger geographic area.
One such example is agricultural damage in the Gaza Strip. He Yin, head of the Remote Sensing and Land Sciences Laboratory at Kent State University in Ohio, has been studying this impact in Gaza for the past year using satellite imagery. His photos show that within a year of the war's outbreak, Israel had destroyed 70 percent of the agricultural land and trees in the strip.
“The rate of destruction is staggering. (According to the) Geneva Convention, farmlands should not be targeted in times of war,” Yin said.
“The damage to the environment is enormous and affects everything.”
Plants cool land surface temperatures and also absorb carbon dioxide, so destroying vegetation could exacerbate the effects of climate change over a larger area that is already warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.
Yin said he had not seen any other war zones with such a high rate of destruction of agricultural land.
The IDF “certainly does not use water, agricultural land or any humanitarian resources as weapons of war,” a military spokesman said in a statement, but Hamas does embed military resources “in, under and near agricultural areas.”
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“IDF locates and destroys terrorist infrastructure discovered, including in and around the affected agricultural and water facilities.”
Yin fears that as the war spreads across the region and continues in Gaza, damage to land and vegetation will continue to spread.
“Some areas have really unique flora and native plants… I worry that if the war continues, sooner or later they will disappear too,” he said. “So we will also lose all these endemic plants and all these important ecosystems.”
Since April, Israel has dropped approximately 70,000 tons of bombs on the Gaza Strip, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. The UN estimates that by July, Israel's use of explosive weapons had created more than 42 million tons of debris, much of which may be contaminated with biological waste, unexploded ordnance, asbestos and other harmful construction materials.
According to Israeli data, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, in which approximately 1,200 people were killed and approximately 250 hostages were taken in Gaza. According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, the ground invasion has since killed more than 42,000 Palestinians. Most of Gaza's 2.3 million residents have been displaced.
Greenhouse gas emissions in the air
A June study by an international team of researchers found that emissions from the first 120 days of the war alone were greater than the annual emissions of 26 individual countries and territories.
Co-author Benjamin Neimark, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, says the study does not cover all related emissions and was only intended to provide a “conservative picture” of a very intense period of greenhouse gas emissions by the military.
“Now we are looking at (over) 365 days. And we expand it spatially, let's say geographically, and also the types of fights. Then you will definitely get a much higher number,” he said.
Neimark says the biggest source is likely the constant shipment of weapons from North America and Europe to Israel on large cargo jets.
Currently, the military reports its emissions voluntarily – and, if at all, inaccurately, one joint study estimates that military activity is responsible for as much as 5.5% of global emissions.
“We basically can't limit what we don't know, right? And now we know very little,” Neimark said.
Polluted water, damaged sewage treatment plants
In October, the Palestinian Water Authority reported that more than 85 percent of water and sewage facilities in Gaza were completely or partially out of service due to Israeli attacks on critical water and wastewater infrastructure. As a result, raw sewage is discharged into the Mediterranean Sea, polluting the sea and contributing to waterborne diseases.
As the conflict spreads across the region, some fear Israel could target Iran's oil infrastructure, which Weir said could cause massive fires and significant air, soil and water damage that would spread to neighboring countries.
There are several mechanisms for holding countries accountable for environmental destruction during war, although there are a few countries pushing for ecocide to become an international crime.
For individuals, the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, makes it a war crime to cause serious environmental damage that is “manifestly excessive in relation to the specific and direct overall anticipated military advantage.”
“Some parts can't be repaired”: scientist
Mazin Qumsiyeh, director of the Palestinian Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainable Development at the University of Bethlehem in the West Bank, claims that Israel is committing genocide and is deliberately making Gaza uninhabitable – an accusation South Africa has brought in an ongoing case before the UN's highest court.
Israel has repeatedly denied such allegations, opposing the findings of some human rights groups.
“Some (damage) will be repairable, but some will not be repairable,” Qumsiyeh said. “We won't know for sure until we have access to soil and water samples and are able to collect them and analyze them in laboratories.
Ismail Alyan says he was having breakfast with his family when his apartment near the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza was nearly destroyed in an Israeli attack on June 8 that rescued four Israeli hostages but killed more than 270 Palestinians.
“Of course, all the labs in Gaza were destroyed, so we don't have a chance to use any of the in-house labs.”
The destruction of agricultural land also has a devastating impact on Gaza's economy, halting food exports and eliminating one of its largest sources of jobs, he said.
Qumsiyeh argues that in addition to environmental and economic devastation, it also has devastating cultural consequences for the Palestinian people. The area encompassing the Palestinian territories and Israel was one of the first in the world to develop agriculture thousands of years ago.
“The devastation is incomprehensible, not only in economic terms, but also in the social fabric and cultural connections to the land.”
Qumsiyeh said about one-third of the Wadi Gaza nature reserve was also significantly damaged during the war, including from nearby attacks such as an Israeli air attack on the Nuseirat River Refugee Camp in June, according to Palestinian officials, at least 274 people were killed and 698 were injured
While there is currently no way to measure the effects, he says there will likely be damage to the animals that live there, including foxes, hyenas and endangered raptors and owls.
Beyond the human tragedy, Qumsiyeh says it's “absolutely crazy” from an environmental perspective to see the war in the Middle East expand into Lebanon without a serious discussion about the feasibility of diplomacy.
“Wars are disastrous for the global environment, not just the local one,” he said. “When we see the hurricanes that are currently affecting the US, it's all connected.
“These are not isolated cases. We can no longer afford wars.”
