The Ecocidal War
on Palestine and Beyond
Public Space Magazine
January 3, 2025
January 3, 2025
War and conflict are large contributors to climate change. A conservative estimate of emissions is 5.5%. It is generally known to be higher because of transparency problems regarding military emissions. Assocciate costs not factored in include the direct costs of maintaining and employing military equipment to various parts of the world, damage to natural ecosystems, building and construction, waste disposal, fire and damage to infrastructure, debris management and disposal, soil degradation, land changes, costs of transport for medical care, the displacement of civilian's humanitarian support, and post-conflict reconstruction. Meaningfully, there is the significant cost of human lives, particularly of more vulnerable children, whether from disease and starvation or from unexploded ordinance.
Fueled by powerful interests anthropogenic emissions inputs intensify a positive feedback loop; wars feed climate change and climate change feeds more wars that have the potential to lead to an interalterable ecocide/genocide relationship that will persist through generations.
Under the Stockholm Conference of 1972, it was stated that “safeguarding the homo sapiens” is the primary objective of environmental laws without “much emphasis on the protection of other components of the environment.”
The 1972 United Nations conference on the environment in Stockholm was the first world conference to make the environment a major issue. One of the outcomes was the creation of the United Nations environment Program(UNEP).
Swedish prime minister, Olof Palme, gave a speech at the abov UN Conference. He said, “The immense destruction brought about by indiscriminate bombing, by large-scale use of bulldozers and herbicides, is an outrage sometimes described as ecocide, which requires urgent international attention.”
That year, Arthur Galston a plant biologist asked the international community to come together against "deep ecocide". That same year Richard Falk, a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and current chairman of the board of trustees with Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, driven by the devastation in Vietnam and its effects on people, proposed an international convention on the crime of ecocide. He said that the environmental damage was so significant that it represented an opportunity comparable to Nuremberg.
In 1977, the Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD) held in Geneva defined ecocide as protecting the environment regardless of whether any human interest have been violated (wikipedia) .
That same year, in 1977, in the context of armed conflict, the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions (wikipedia) and the ICRC's Customary IHL Study prohibited the use of the natural environment as a weapon of war. These rules also require that the natural environment be protected and preserved during armed conflict.
In 1998, the Rome Statute recognized the protection of the environment concerning the methods and means of warfare. It stated "it is prohibited to employ methods or means of warfare which are intended or may be expected to cause widespread long-term and severe damage to the natural environment.” It also stated that it did not require actual damage to the environment merely launching an attack with the knowledge that it would result in such damage suffices to criminalized to conduct.
In 2016, a policy paper under the International Criminal Court (ICC) from the office of the prosecutor was the first time the Court explicitly expressed the prosecutor's readiness to investigate environmental harm. Specifically, the policy paper noted that environmental damage would be taken into consideration when assessing the gravity of other criminal conducts. However, did not mention the prosecution of environmental crimes as such. Still, it was a small step forward even if its anthropogenic provision only incidentally recognized the environment as a separate entity that deserved protection.
The struggle to advance the meaning of ecocide, whether dependent or independent of human activity, became an obscure activity for over half a century. In the face of climate change, the search for its legal meaning in effective terms has been revived.
Ecocide has been defined by the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide, convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation, as ‘unlawful or wanton’ acts carried out with the knowledge ‘that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts’. Potential examples of ecocide included transboundary harms such as nuclear accidents and major oil spills.
In MIT's Global Environmental Politics, Elizabeth Chalecki offers a definition of environmental terrorism which perhaps could be grounds for a more full bodied and effective look at ecocide given particular genocidal acts on the part of Israel. International law addresses the targeting of the environment in war time. Chalecki goes on to describe, "[E]nvironmental terrorism is committed by those who attack in situ environmental resources or environmentally related infrastructure to achieve political or ideological aims unconnected to the environment itself...Sites vulnerable to environmental terrorism include water resources and infrastructures, agriculture and forest areas, mineral and petroleum infrastructures, and wildlife and ecosystem sites."
In 2019 at the 18th session of the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute (ASP) the small Pacific island state of Vanuatu proposed adding the crime of ecocide to the ICC's working group on amendments. Like other island states Vanuatu existed in an environment that was severely and more immediately threatened by destruction and deterioration of nature and human existence related to climate change caused by anthropogenic actions from countries with high GHG emissions. That year, Vanuatu hosted a Pacific Isloand roundtable to raise awareness of the ICC and to encourage other states in the region to join the Rome statute.
In late 2020 the Stop Ecocide Foundation through an independent expert panel (IEP) expanded the definition of ecocide to include peace time and published a draft of its conclusions in 2021. It claimed ecocide should be a fifth environmental crime on par with genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression and proposed the incorporation of that crime in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). This was a major step.
In 2021, the World Economic Forum, a global panel of environmental and criminal law attorneys reinforced the legal meaning of ecocide as equivelant to crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, and the crime of aggression.
The State of Vanuatu has led the way in terms of pushing for an amendment to the Rome Statute that would establish ecocide as its fifth international crime.
In September 2024, the small island states (SIDS), Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa, submitted a request to the UN Secretary-General and the Working Group on Amendments of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to amend and broaden the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to include ecocide.
On December 3, Vanuatu delivered its view at a roundtable general debate at the 23rd session of ASP. The state condemned increased recent political attacks against the ICC and restated its belief in the potential of the Rome Statute system and said "the International Criminal Court is legally, politically and financially equipped to discharge its crucial mandate." Vanuatu noted the renewed strength of support around the world toward enacting laws for ecocide.
The direction toward recognizing ecocide in law as a crime is found in 11countries. Twenty seven more countries are currently considering making ecocide a crime.
A Global Commons Survey 2024, conducted by Ipsos UK and commissioned by Earth4All and the Global Commons Alliance (GCA) found that 72% of people across G20 countries, which includes some of the richest countries in the world, agree that the most severe forms of environmental harm, increasingly known as ecocide should be a crime.
Following the Rome Statute, the International Criminal Court (ICC) had been engaged in a process of weighing suggestions as to how to go after global environmental crimes and how it fit within its jurisdiction which is ... environmental protections are viewed through the lens of human and humanitarian rights in specific circumstances, e.g war and conflict.
It had looked at existing examples of how environmental crimes could be handled. For instance, Belgium had set an example as the first European country to recognise ecocide as an international crime. It is stringent in its penalties and more broadly based in terms of recognizing the casuality of acts and different contexts within and outside of its territory.
The ICC released a policy draft on December 18, 2024. With this draft the office of the prosecutor expressed some urgency given climate change. It described its plan to treat its evolving policies related to environmental harm as a living document open to further input.
The introduction of the policy document acknowledged the different opinions expressed by experts and countries as to whether The Rome Statute itself, which was anthropogentically based, should be revised versus the ICC working cooperatively with other bodies of law, or perhaps a court that might bring broader and perhaps more stringent meanings in terms of criminalization for environmental harms.
Its direction did not include amending the Rome Statute. The ICC's jurisdiction is based on The Rome Statute and does not extend to meanings of environmental harms as independent of human concerns. However, the policy document also indicated that policies under The Rome Statute were part of a whole need to address climate change and that it was important to integrate and/or support, within its jurisdiction, other legal avenues.
The policy document also demonstrated the latitude for criminality that could be effectively available under the Rome Statute.
Importantly, it emphasized the need to represent indigenous interests, which opens the door for other possibilities.
Maybe cooperative efforts to make and implement the rule of law nationally and internationally will recognize that while genocide and ecocide are inseparable meanings, the environment should not be viewed as "incidental" to war and other harmful human activities. A more holistic approach can protect both nature and humans wholly, in terms of time and space, if mitigation of the harm is not confined to the limitations of an event.
The story of Palestine, which has been and will be decades in the making, demonstrates how critical it is to employ the full reach of legal entities that either act with a common interest within their jurisdictions or adjust their mandates to enforce laws with the understanding that climate change as a existential threat to humanity is fueled by the reality that violence begets climate change and climate change begets violence. This positive feedback loop has been made worse by the collusion and self interests of large emitters of GHG who benefit from warfare.
The Gaza Strip, located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea with a largely temperate climate used to be rich in flora and fauna. It was also home to a growing population with limited access to technologies existing on a small piece of land. As time went on Gaza's environmental challenges grew. A continually beleagured and occupied territory by a militarized state claiming self defense was forced to exist without freedom of movement and eventually starve on an increasingly barren and toxic land.
The olive tree, November 27, 2005
It only took a short period of time to make things worse as an outcome of Israel's genocidal practices following October 6; in cases, perhaps to a point of no return.
The destruction of land and people, as well as the curtailment of pursuits toward climate change solutions, was extensive.
The evidence is there in front of viewers around the world and through science.
As far as the event itself and its impact on the environment, the unprecedented environmental damage of Israel’s ecocide in Gaza has exponentially compounded the humanitarian costs of its genocidal war beyond the mere violence of the military operation itself. Columbia Political Review.
In The Express Tribune, Dr. Patrick Bigger, Research Director at the Climate & Community Institute, said,
“[The] levels of destruction are unprecedented, making it difficult to draw direct comparisons with other conflicts, including in Ukraine.” He said that one of the most overlooked tragedies was the destruction of Gaza City’s infrastructure, including its rooftop solar systems, which boasted one of the highest concentrations in the world before October 2023.
As of April 2023, Israel had dropped an estimated 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. By July Israel's use of explosive weapons had generated more than 42 million tons of debris. The UN estimated, much of the debris was likely contaminated with biological waste, unexploded bombs, asbestos and other harmful building materials.
By December 4 2023, at least 200 American cargo flights and 20 ships were reported to have delivered 10,000 tons of military equipment to Israel. The flights carried around 50m litres of aviation fuel, which put an estimated 133,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, more than the entire island of Grenada over a year. (Figures need to be updated for 2024).
From a humanitarian perspective, which follows the Rome Statute, a report on Palestine defined the application of the term "ecocide" in relation to Israel's extensive destruction, which included the damaging, and obliteration of the "basic components of the environment and ecosystems in Gaza to such a degree that the survival of the Palestinian population is severely threatened or rendered impossible for currernt inhabitants and future generations, compromising their ability to live and prosper in Gaza."
In SmallParkBigRun, Samar Safiya, a Gazan environmental activist, painted a "bleak picture" of the situation on the ground. She said that 40% of land has been destroyed; “More than 80,000 tons of Israeli bombs have spared neither fields, olive trees nor lemon trees. ... This environmental destruction accompanies the massacres and genocide.”
Documentation providing strong evidence of the genocide and ecocide happening in Gaza in built environments, in agriculture and in ecosystems has been continuous thanks to means such as radar mapping. It has revealed the unimaginable losses to the built environment, including life sustaining structures as well as the loss of over 50% of agricultural lands, the rapid erosion of beachfront,and nature to the foreground, and the violent development practices on the part of Israel.
He Yin, head of the Remote Sensing and Land Science Lab at Kent State University in Ohio, produced satellite images showing a rapidly eroding beachfront and that Israel has destroyed 70% of Gaza's agricultural land and tree cover since the war broke out.
This kind of mapping provides evidence of the systemic elimination of an entire country. They help reveal the consequences of Israel’s ongoing ecocide in Gaza, highlighting how the deliberate destruction of the environment has been systematically used to undermine the survival and well-being of the Palestinian population, both immediate and long-term. Aside from increasing food insecurity, and the loss of livelihoods in Gaza there are regional effects.
As just one example, Yin noted that plants cool land surface temperature and absorb carbon dioxide, the destruction of vegetation in Gaza and the West Bank by Israel has climate change effects in a larger region which is already warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.
Demolition and construction associated with West Bank land grabs. Construction activities account for 37% of global emissions, From The Settlers (Inside the Jewish Settlements), Best Documentary,January 4, 2024, on YouTube.
This kind of continuous documentation along with on-the-ground courageous journalistic and civilian reports provide strong evidence of the genocide, ecocide, and, what has been coined as urbicide, happening in Gaza in built environments, in agriculture and in ecosystems. It has revealed the unimaginable losses to the built environment, including life sustaining structures.
For instance, in addition to the outsized emissions of 37% related to construction activities, the destruction of the built environment brings serious health issues that can potentially linger in humans for decades. In PAX, while further studies of Gaza and the West Bank are needed, it is evident that there will be debris-related diseases stemming from the large destruction brought by Israel. Wim Zwijnenburg, a researcher with PAX, said that "civilians in settings with dust, debris and rubble inhale it frequently...At the moment, nobody is looking at those kinds of risks. But it does have real-life effects.'”
Palestine's wildlife has suffered. In Egypt Today, Engineer Bahjat Jabarin, Director of Monitoring and Inspection at the Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority said that Israel's war on Palestine has led to the loss of birds which have depended on Gaza as a critical ecological zone in their migratory flights. Additionally, the ongoing conflict has led to habitat loss and near extinction and displacement of around 250 bird species. He added that "The combined effects of pollution from wastewater, solid waste, heavy metals from weapons, and airborne particles from the bombings have led to a near-total annihilation of the region’s biodiversity." Seed banks in Palestine, part of a fundamental life saver for an entire region, have been either invaded or destroyed.
As an occupied territory, Palestine reported in its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) that it was forced to reduce its climate change ambitions from 26.6% to 17.5%. Despite this, at COP28 held in 2023, Ikhmais, said about Palestine's climate obligations, still "territories will need to adapt to climate change no less urgently that the rest of the world."
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, held public hearings at the Peace Palace in The Hague from December 2 to December 13 2024 following a request from the General Assembly for an advisory opinion on the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change.
In the ICJ hearings Palestine asked the Court for specific guidance on state responsibility for the emissions resulting from armed conflicts and occupation saying that the subject was currently missing from UNFCCC reporting.
Palestine had submitted its NDC and shared its climate ambitions. It had participated in the International Court of Justice hearings requested by the UN General Assembly. It had developed projects to combat climate change, including an impressive installation of solar alternatives, which Israel destroyed. Yet, because of its status the country is often excluded from meaningful participation as a state in governmental efforts.
In Wikipedia,
As of June 2024, the State of Palestine is recognized as a sovereign state by 146 of the 193 member states of the United Nations, or just over 75% of all UN members.[1][2][3] It has been a non-member observer state of the United Nations General Assembly since November 2012.[4][5] This limited status is largely due to the fact that the United States, a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto power, has consistently used its veto or threatened to do so to block Palestine's full UN membership.[6][7.
And worse, the international community did not stopped the bombing and in too many cases supplied the weaponry so Israel could continue the assault on Palestine despite overwhelming evidence that Israel's targeted destruction far removed from any claim of self defense.
The Palestinian contingent that spoke at the ICJ hearings identfied the Israeli occupation of the State of Palestine as the single greatest threat to its climate change ambitions.
The country's introduction included the statement, "The State of Palestine believes that it can best assist by focusing on a particular issue that, despite its great importance, has not yet been adequately addressed in terms of the responsibility of States for the impacts on climate caused by armed conflict and other military activities, including in situations of occupation."
The occupied country made it clear that the cumulative effects of Israel's war of terror over time, which include widespread destruction of Palestine's climate change measures such as the installation of solar alternatives, have increasingly put Palestine's climate change ambition goals out of reach.
Palestine, as Israel presents it and the war on the ground ensures, was effectively a state with non-sovereign status, despite any international recognition of its statehood, which, as stated by a member of the Palestinian delegation at the ICJ hearings, had put Palestine "in the strange position of having to represent the future of a structure that attempts to erase them.”
In a plea to the court, a speaker for Palestine said to the Court, ” please don’t leave anyone behind."
In a Democracy Now interview, Hadeel Ikhmais, head of the climate change office at the Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority, said, “We are trying to do our part on the climate crisis but even before the war in Gaza, it is hard to adapt and mitigate when we cannot access water or land or any technologies without Israel’s permission."
As one example of Palestine's helplessness due to lack of access to the engorged Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) (which has been occupied for over 56 years by Israel's military), let's take the subject of trees. In terms of destroyed or poisoned trees significant harm might or might not reach the status of a crime of ecocide depending on the context, but should be considered, at the least, as an environmental crime on behalf of human rights and perhaps the rights of nature.
Israel's lofty sounding climate change ambitions as presented in its NDCs are undermined by the fact that it had destroyed much of the indigenous plant life in Gaza and the West Bank that was critical for adaptative strategies as well as uprooting or killing olive trees with herbicides and replacing these hardy species, which are a cultural icon and source of livelihood for Palestinians. It replaced what it killed with non-indigenous species, often in razed areas following displacement of Palestinians. These included species that are prone to fire, (a particular problem in wartime conditions).
In The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, "By actively planting the wrong trees in the wrong locations, Israel is also acting against its international commitments to protect biodiversity...Further, the negative impacts of these planted forests are not restricted to the planted area; the planted pine forests have harmful effects on nearby natural areas, including the spread of toxic pine needles, invasive plants, and species into areas they shouldn’t be. Plus, planted forests in these open areas do not contribute to the positive balance of climate change mitigation".
The UN's Conference of the Parties (COP) have increasingly come under fire for too little emphasis on compliance and accountability and definitive solutions to the imbalanced power relations represented by heavy emitters including emissions associated with war.
At COP27, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, who recently supported the collective punishment of civilians in Gaza, promised that Israel would be “net zero” by 2050. However, since he failed to mention Palestine and Palestinians in his speech it is unclear whether the environmental consequences of its occupation e.g., 40,000 tons of explosives dropped on Gaza (which amounts to more than two nuclear bombs) would be included as part of Israel’s carbon footprint this year.
In contrast to the delimina faced by Palestine's claim that war and loss of soverignty over time were the country's largest challenges to climate ambitions, Israel’s original and revised NDCs and ICJ testimony, Israel provided no accounting of emissions related to its war on Palestine. In fact, its submissions to the UN erased the very existence of Palestine by never mentioning the word “Palestine”.
As further evidence of its intent to disappear a state in the face of world opinion, Israel’s contingencies in relation to NDC ambition goals primarily referenced an expanding population and economic growth. What state? What expanding population? Who benefited from expanding economic growth? Given the number of deaths that occurred and land occupations that have occurred in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria post 10/7, Palestinians were clearly not part of a projected expanding population, It was more that likely settlers and those looking for beachfront property were. Predictably, this "expanding population" would lead to even more rapid development contributing further to climate change.
AT COP28, The Israeli delegation promoted its burgeoning climate tech industry in areas such as carbon capture and storage, water harvesting, and plant-based meat alternatives. “Israel’s biggest contribution to the climate crisis comes in the form of the solutions,” said Gideon Behar, special envoy for climate change and sustainability. "Solutions" did not include any talk about mitigating emissions from wars.
Ran Peleg, Israel’s director of Middle East economic relations, told the Guardian that the question of calculating greenhouse gas emissions from IDF operations – current or previous – had not been discussed. “This is actually the first time this issue has been raised, and I’m not aware that there are any ways to count these kinds of things.”
Effectively, Israel had not only erased an entire country on paper it had also denied its sizable contribution to GHG with the help of the US and, to a lesser extent, other countries.
At COP 29 a Peace and Demilitarization Working Group held a press conference on the inclusion of militarism in climate negotiations. A number of other delegations also drew attention to the conflict-climate intersection, addressing, as Belarus noted, the “more than 50 conflicts in the world that have harsh effects on the climate and on our planet”. Panama called out the absurdity of the situation: “Global military spending stands at about $2.5 trillion yearly; $2.4 trillion to kill each other is not too much but $1 trillion to save lives is unreasonable.”
Climate change has brought the reality that countries are left behind because the international rule of law as it stands and as it is reflected in the COPs does not adequately apply to everyone or to the planet itself, which is why more vulnerable countries have increasingly called for a systemic integration of climate laws and general laws.
Why is the subject of ecocide so important? Even if Israel's genocidal and ecocidal war on Palestine ended now - if Palestine survived as a nation - the recovery of its people and the environment will require help with their climate change ambitions. They will need restitution and support given the damage that has been done to their country. The need for this support goes beyond the limitations of humanitarian law or human rights under the current rule of law.
Rebuilding a society will take generations with the understanding that life as they know it, as we all know it, is over. Building communities and infrastructure are already points of discussion in Palestine even in the face of its attempted erasure by Israel. That is the hope of a country.
The challenge is great. It requires dealing not only with toxcity in the ground and air, and residing in human beings, but in human relationships and political forces. This includes redress for present and past ecocide and crimes against humanity on the part of Israel, and those who fueled the war, that extends into the future. There is ongoing debate as to the value of another international court to accommodate a radically changing world.
The climate change story will continue. Meanwhile, each generation, hopefully with new insights, will face its own struggle to find a peaceful co-existence where there is a capacity to mitigate anthropogenic harms and adapt to new conditions for the sake of life on the planet. As far as this generation? There should be no half measures. The goals are soverignty so each country can do its part to protect nature and the self determination to make that happen. Time is short.