Israel’s War Decimated Gaza’s Farmlands and Killed Most of its Livestock

The bombing has destroyed agricultural land and poisoned the soil, while Israel’s sweeping blockade has made water scarce for farmers who once provided a third of Gaza’s food needs.

A man waters crops near his family shelter in Gaza, November 20, 2024. (Photo by Moiz Salhi/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

GAZA—On an afternoon in early February, Sami Abu Amr, a 61-year-old farmer, walked through his roughly three-acre stretch of land that lies east of the Gaza City neighborhood of Shuja’iyya where he once tended olive trees and grew seasonal vegetables, including cucumbers, tomatoes, and potatoes. Before the war, the sale of his produce to local residents provided the sole source of income for his family of 13, including his sons and grandchildren. But these agricultural lands are now a scene of devastation: A barren landscape of uprooted trees, bulldozer tracks and soil riddled with craters left by Israeli airstrikes.

Along with the ruin of his farmland, the Israeli military had also destroyed Abu Amr’s agricultural equipment, greenhouse, irrigation network, and poultry farm, amounting to losses he estimates at $70,000. "This land is not just a source of livelihood,” Abu Amr said. “It is my life, my history. I have nurtured it with my sweat for years.”

Before Israel’s assault began in 2023, agricultural land covered approximately 47% of the Gaza Strip and produced enough food to serve up to a third of local demand, offering a critical source of food for Palestinians living under siege for nearly two decades.

Following the “ceasefire” that went into effect January 19, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza returned to their homes and land after months of forced displacement only to find an apocalyptic landscape. In addition to the destruction of homes, shops, bakeries, hospitals, universities, roads, and other civilian infrastructure, Israel has decimated almost all of Gaza’s agricultural capacity.

According to the UN, 82% of croplands, 55% of on-farm irrigation systems and 78% of greenhouses have been damaged, leaving once-productive fields barren. Nearly 70% of agricultural wells have been damaged while 96% of cattle and 99% of poultry have died.

The first phase of the “ceasefire,” which went into effect on January 19, allowed for a surge of aid into Gaza, providing some degree of reprieve to the humanitarian catastrophe. However, Israel violated the agreement by heavily restricting the number of trucks carrying fuel—critical for powering generators and equipment—as well as live animals and animal feed. On March 2, as the first phase of the ceasefire ended, Israel announced it was reimposing a total blockade on Gaza—barring any trucks from entering—as it had done in the opening weeks of its military campaign in October 2023. According to the signed ceasefire agreement, discussions about the implementation of the second phase of the deal were slated to commence on February 3, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to send a negotiating team and swiftly returned to his agenda of sabotage.

Food prices in Gaza doubled or tripled within a day of phase one’s end, as Israel once again wielded forced hunger and starvation as a weapon of war, tactics that led to the issuance of arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court for Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant. Farmers who have returned to their lands have to contend with the destruction of their equipment, greenhouses and agricultural soil, as well as the scarcity of desalinated water. Israel has also imposed heavy restrictions on the entry of seeds, fertilizers and other items needed for farming.

Abu Amr is now starting from scratch. Accessing water is no easy feat—over the course of the war, the Israeli military targeted essential infrastructure, including water wells that had sustained agriculture in the area. "It's as if they wanted to kill the land before they killed us," Abu Amr said.

Hosni Mehanna, a spokesperson for the Gaza Municipality, told Drop Site that 203 out of 319 water wells in Gaza have suffered severe damage, rendering them unusable. He added that the main challenge now is the absence of equipment and machinery to repair wells and damaged water networks.

Per capita water supply in Gaza has dropped to around three liters per day, Mehanna said. The World Health Organization maintains that 20 liters per capita per day is the minimum quantity of safe water required to meet essential levels of health and hygiene.

With no water supply and no working irrigation pipes, Abu Amr explored digging a private well, but the cost was steep—$8,000, a sum he did not have.

In mid-February, when he told his wife about his dilemma, she handed him gold jewelry she had inherited from her mother. "Take my gold and plant the land,” she told him. “We don’t need gold if we have no land.”

He had no choice but to take the risk, selling the gold and hiring an excavator to drill the well, even as he feared the money might run out before they hit groundwater. "Those were heavy moments,” he said. “I feared the depth wouldn't be enough, or that the water would be scarce. But I kept telling myself: the land never fails its people."

After days of work, water finally burst from the ground—a sign of hope. Abu Amr then collected his hoses, which were damaged during the war and riddled with holes, and asked a local workshop to repair them.

He now faced his next challenge: There were no seeds available due to Israel’s heavy restrictions on seed kits into Gaza for the past 17 months. Searching through what remained of his old stock, Abu Amr found a handful of cucumber and pepper seeds. He began planting them in plastic bags filled with soil, and irrigating them with the little water he could draw from the well until the seedlings were ready for planting. "They may have stolen everything from us, but they will not steal our will,” he said. “This land will be green again, even if I pay for it with my heart's blood."

An analysis by Forensic Architecture last year found that by March 2024, approximately 40 percent of the land in Gaza previously used for food production has been destroyed. Since then, farmers say the devastation has become even more catastrophic. (Credit: Forensic Architecture)

As farmers begin their efforts to resume cultivation of their land, there are mounting fears that Israel’s relentless bombing campaign and ground invasion may have permanently damaged much of the soil in Gaza and rendered it infertile.

On the outskirts of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, Farid al-Attar, a 52-year-old farmer, stood in the middle of his land, gazing in sorrow at the tomato and corn seedlings he planted weeks ago, now drooped and withering. The soil, he fears, is ruined.

Al-Attar knelt down and touched the yellow leaves of his corn seedlings. "This has never happened to me before. I have been farming here for twenty years, and this soil has always given me good crops. But now, it's as if the land is sick. It doesn't respond to farming," he observed. “I feel that the land is not the same anymore. Even the water we irrigate the crops with has changed, maybe toxic substances have seeped into it?”

Al-Attar’s theory is likely correct. Last November, the Environmental Quality Authority—an independent agency established by the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s—published a report concluding that Israel’s dropping of more than 85,000 tons of munitions on Gaza has led to "pollution of the soil with toxic chemicals that will make agriculture difficult for decades to come." The report also pointed out that Israel used various types of weapons, including white phosphorus, that can cause permanent environmental damage.

Al-Attar fears that this is the beginning of the death of the agricultural sector in Gaza. Israel’s ongoing restrictions on the entry of fertilizers and agricultural equipment, combined with a lack of clean water for irrigation, has stripped farmers of any options to try to salvage their land.

"We are not asking for the impossible, just let us plant and live,” he said. “Agriculture in Gaza is not just a profession, it is our life. If no one moves to save it, we will lose our only source of food."