‘No traces of life’: Israel’s Ecocide in Gaza 2023-2024
Building on Forensic Architecture’s previous investigation into herbicidal warfare and its effects on Palestinian farmers along the eastern perimeter of the occupied Gaza Strip, this investigation marks Land Day in Palestine by examining the systematic targeting of orchards and greenhouses by Israeli forces since October 2023. Our analysis reveals that this destruction is a widespread and deliberate act of ecocide that has exacerbated the ongoing catastrophic famine in Gaza and is part of a wider pattern of deliberately depriving Palestinians of critical resources for survival.
Since 2014, Palestinian farmers along Gaza’s perimeter have seen their crops sprayed by airborne herbicides and regularly bulldozed, and have themselves faced sniper fire by the Israeli occupation forces. Along that engineered ‘border’, sophisticated systems of fences and surveillance reinforce a military buffer zone.
Since October 2023, Israel’s ground invasion has uprooted most of these orchards and systematically targeted agricultural farmlands and infrastructure throughout the besieged Strip.
