The Gaza Strip exported 44.6 million dollars worth of products in 2022.
Gaza:
Tank tracks still fresh in his field in the coastal area of Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza, Nedal Abu Jazar lamented the damage the war had caused to his trees and crops.
“Look at the destruction,” the 39-year-old farmer told AFP, holding an uprooted tomato.
He pointed to the metal structure of his greenhouse and the white plastic spread across the land, within an area designated as a humanitarian zone by the Israeli army.
“People were sitting peacefully on their farmland… and suddenly the tanks came and fired at us, and then there were (air) attacks.”
Abu Jazar said the Israeli operation in late June destroyed about 40 dunams (10 acres) of land and killed five workers.
His case is not an isolated case. In Gaza, 57 percent of agricultural land has been damaged since the start of the war, according to a joint assessment published in June by the UN agriculture and satellite imagery agencies FAO and UNOSAT.
The damage threatens Gaza’s food sovereignty, Matieu Henry of the Food and Agriculture Organization told AFP, because 30 percent of the Palestinian territory’s food consumption comes from agricultural land.
“If almost 60 percent of farmland has been damaged, this could have a significant impact in terms of food security and food supply.”
The Gaza Strip exported products worth US$44.6 million in 2022, mainly to the West Bank and Israel, with strawberries and tomatoes representing 60% of the total, according to FAO data.
That number fell to zero after the October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP calculation based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive killed at least 38,098 people, most of them civilians, according to data from the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-administered territory.
The assessment of damage to farmland comes at a time when the UN hunger monitoring system estimated in June that 96 percent of Gaza faces high levels of acute food insecurity.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army said it “does not intentionally harm agricultural land”.
In a statement, it said Hamas “often operates in orchards, fields and farmland.”
No work, no income
The impact is worst in the north of the Palestinian territory, where 68 percent of agricultural land is damaged, although the southern zone, which encompasses parts of Al-Mawasi, has seen the most significant increase in recent months due to military operations.
UNOSAT’s Lars Bromley told AFP that the damage is generally “due to the impact of activities such as heavy vehicle activity, bombings, bombings and other conflict-related dynamics, which would be things like burnt areas.”
Near the southern city of Rafah, 34-year-old farmer Ibrahim Dheir feels helpless after the destruction of 20 dunams (five acres) of land he used to rent, and with it all his farming equipment.
“As soon as Israeli tractors and tanks entered the area, they began demolishing land cultivated with a variety of trees, including berries, citrus fruits, guava, as well as crops such as spinach, molokhia (mallow jute), eggplant, pumpkin, pumpkin and seedlings. sunflower. ” he said, before listing more damage in a testament to the area’s past agricultural bounty.
Dheir, whose family exported their products to the West Bank and Israel, now feels destitute.
“We used to depend on agriculture for our daily subsistence, but now there is no work or income.”
Lasting damage
Farmer Abu Mahmoud Za’arab also finds himself “without a source of income”.
The 60-year-old owns 15 dunams (3.7 acres) of land where crops and fruit trees used to grow.
“The Israeli army passed through the land, completely destroying all the trees and crops,” he told AFP.
“They bulldozed and bombed the land, turning it into barren pits.”
The damage done to farmland in Gaza will last far beyond the tank tracks and explosions, said UNOSAT’s Bromley.
“With modern weaponry, a certain percentage will always fail. Tank shells won’t explode, artillery shells won’t explode…so clearing these unexploded ordnances is a huge task,” he said.
It will be necessary to “probe every inch of soil before allowing farmers to use it again”.
Despite the risks, Dheir wants to return to farming.
“We want the war to end and for things to go back to the way they were, so we can go back to farming and cultivating our land.”
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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