6/6/2025–|Last update: 17:52 (Mecca time)
Private- Al-Jazeera Net
In its war on Gaza, Israel aims to systematically destroy agricultural spaces, within its plans for comprehensive destruction and making the sector insecure, and this is associated with an insult in environmental destruction, and it was described by international and regional organizations and officials as a “environmental extermination”.
An official in the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture said that the Israeli occupation forces destroyed 80% of the agricultural lands in the Gaza Strip, according to a field survey conducted by the ministry before the outbreak of the last wave of the aggression on March 18, 2025.
The Director General of Soil and Irrigation at the Ministry of Agriculture in Gaza Bahaa Al -Din Al -Agha expected that the destruction would extend to all agricultural areas that reach about 180 dunums (180 square kilometers) of tree crops such as olives, palm trees, and greenhouses planted with vegetables and field crops, due to the continued drainage operations for new areas of land.
Al -Agha said – in a special interview with Al -Jazeera Net – that the Israeli aggression has lost more than 50 thousand farms and workers in the agricultural sector, who were taking about a quarter of a million members of their families.
Systematic destruction
The government official warned that the bombing of the Israeli occupation buildings and lands of the Gaza Strip with tens of thousands of tons of ammunition containing heavy minerals and toxic substances that are difficult to get rid of in the short term, and will have catastrophic consequences on the soil that are no longer suitable for agriculture, and faces the challenges of land pollution, water resources and air with its remains.
Al -Agha stressed that the dangerous materials in munitions cause direct and immediate toxicity of plants and animals, which leads to an increase in the number of deaths, low growth, stress, diseases, and damage to living organisms.
He explained that the effects of explosive materials will extend to contracts through biological accumulation through food networks, and the focus of quantities of these substances in some living organisms.
He noted that the effects of some types of dangerous materials remain in the soil, groundwater, sea water and marine sediments for long periods of which may last for decades.
Al -Agha pointed out that the chemical properties of explosive materials remain in debris, and their removal or treatment may lead to the risk of exposure to them directly.
Long -term effects
Al -Agha, who is an expert in environmental affairs, stressed that the effects of explosives on human health reach fatal degrees, where TNT is a potential carcinogenic substance, and long -term exposure can lead to liver and kidney damage, while drinking water contaminated with RDX affects the nervous system, and the person may cause epileptic seizures, cramps, cramps and nausea And vomiting.
He stated that heavy metals are highly toxic, especially arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury can cause damage to many organs even when exposed to low levels of them, and that the chronic exposure to low levels of lead leads to a delay in growth and long -term effects on the brain and general health.
Al -Agha touched on a study conducted after the previous wars on Gaza, and focused on samples of soil taken from digging bombs in agricultural lands, where it showed high levels of nickel, chromium, copper, manganese and bullets, which poses an inherent danger to the lives of more than two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.
According to Al -Agha, soil recovery from toxic accumulations requires decades, which would fail any process of re -cultivating the earth again in the near term.
He warned that the extent and type of pollution that affected the coastal groundwater layer should be understood, to ensure that people are not exposed to more dangerous chemicals and heavy minerals in their waters or food.
It is believed that stopping the aggression on the Gaza Strip is a maximum priority to start hard work to restore services such as wastewater treatment and hard waste collection, and to restore safe living conditions for a densely populated segment of land, which suffers from water scarcity and pollution and requires very accurate planning.
Al -Agha called for the efforts of international institutions to join the contribution as soon as the aggression stopped the process of removing the rubble with its pollutants, to ensure that they are not spread, and to avoid creating new risks to the residents of Gaza.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) confirmed in its evaluation that 95% of the agricultural lands in the Gaza Strip are no longer suitable for agriculture due to the destruction left by the destroyed Israeli war on the Strip.
The evaluation, which was built on satellite pictures, confirmed that the Israel war targeting stone and human beings in the Strip left only the equivalent of approximately 4.6% of the agricultural area in the sector.