More than six months after Israel’s invasion of Gaza, the Strip’s ability to produce food and clean water has been severely hampered.
Israeli airstrikes and bulldozers destroyed farms and orchards. In southern Gaza, crops abandoned by farmers seeking safety have withered and cattle have been left to die.
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Ashraf Omar Alakras owned a family farm in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, near the border with Israel. He said Israeli bulldozers plowed beneath it in late January to make room for a military buffer zone, along with greenhouses and solar energy projects.
Ashraf Omar Alakras harvests strawberries at his family’s farm in Beit Lahia in December 2022 (Courtesy of Ashraf Omar Alakras) 
A view of the Arafras farm on January 30th after it was destroyed in the Israeli ground invasion. (Ashraf Omar Alakras)
“We worked on a large farm that was inherited from our ancestors,” he told The Washington Post, sharing photos and videos of his now-defunct life. “We grew oranges, lemons, potatoes, eggplants, tomatoes and cucumbers.”
The fate of the Alakras farm became the story of Gaza’s agriculture.
Post-analysis of agricultural data, satellite imagery, and interviews with experts and Palestinians in the Strip reveals how an already fragile agricultural system is on the brink of collapse.
Asked to comment on the level of destruction in Gaza’s agricultural sector, the Israel Defense Forces said: “Hamas and other terrorist organizations illegally embed military assets in densely populated civilian areas.” The IDF added that its actions were “based on military necessity and in accordance with international law.”
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Even before the war, most of Gaza’s fruits and vegetables were imported into the enclave. The ability to feed the people of Gaza has been limited for nearly two decades due to a punitive blockade by Israel and Egypt introduced after Hamas seized power in 2007. Israel controlled all but one border crossing. Limited electricity and water supply. Prohibit access to deeper offshore fishing waters. It also restricted the import and export of goods.
As a result, agriculture and fishing were often small-scale but essential businesses. Gazans farmed and fished as much as possible, built rooftop greenhouses, harvested rainwater for irrigation, and built jury-rigged boats powered by cooking oil and car engines. Small olive groves and fruit trees dot the landscape.
Young women pick olives during harvest on a farm in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 2022. (Yousef Masoud/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images)
Local produce such as tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, herbs, red chili peppers, and green chili peppers were transported to the market or directly to the table. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, households will rely on local produce for more than 40% of their fruits and vegetables by 2022.
According to UNOSAT, the United Nations satellite center, agriculture occupied nearly half of Gaza’s total area before the war. His 45 percent of his farmland is now damaged.
UN agricultural damage analysis
Damaged farmland in Gaza
Damaged farmland in Gaza
Damaged farmland in Gaza
Damaged farmland in Gaza
Damaged farmland
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs show damage to tree crops east of Magaji.
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs show damage to tree crops east of Magaji.
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs show damage to tree crops east of Magaji.
Under international humanitarian law, civilians involved in conflict cannot be denied access to food and water by parties to the conflict, legal experts said. This also extends to targeting food infrastructure.
“With very narrow exceptions, attacking, destroying, removing, or disabling these objects is prohibited,” said Tom Dannenbaum, an associate professor of international law at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. “There is,” he said.
Dannenbaum argues that when civilians face starvation, water and food infrastructure such as irrigation and agricultural land, just because combatants operate from within the civilian population does not mean they lose their protected status. He added that it was not.
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He Yin, a satellite imagery analyst and assistant professor at Kent State University, found that as of April 3, nearly half of the Strip’s olive and fruit trees had been damaged or destroyed. Losses could be highest in northern Gaza, he said. 71 percent. He used machine learning (a type of artificial intelligence that identifies visual patterns in data) to detect damage to tree crops and greenhouses across satellite images.
damaged tree crops
Trees damaged in Gaza
Trees damaged in Gaza
Trees damaged in Gaza
Trees damaged in Gaza
Yin found that nearly a quarter of the enclave’s 7,000 greenhouses had been destroyed. 42% are damaged and likely to become unusable.
Damage to greenhouse
Greenhouse damage in Gaza
Greenhouse damage in Gaza
Greenhouse damage in Gaza
Greenhouse damage in Gaza
Damage to greenhouse in southern Gaza City
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs show damage to greenhouses south of Gaza City.
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs show damage to greenhouses south of Gaza City.
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs show damage to greenhouses south of Gaza City.
Gazans have historically relied on aid from UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, but are now even more dependent on the limited aid granted. Many people seek edible plants, and the United Nations says some people have been reduced to eating grass and animal feed. . In northern Gaza, residents told the Post they were surviving on the leafy kubiza that grows naturally in the winter. However, once spring arrived, this source of nutrients disappeared.
A child cries while waiting for food distributed by a charity organization in Gaza City on February 26. (Omar Qattaa/Anadolu/Getty Images)
Máximo Torrero, chief economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, said the level of food insecurity is at a critical stage.
“This is completely man-made,” he said. “And now thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk.”
Compounding the effects of the war, parts of Gaza have lost much of their water supply infrastructure. According to Torero, 50 percent of the capacity is unusable in northern Gaza, 54 percent in central Gaza, 50 percent in Khan Younis and 33 percent in Rafah. Additionally, only two of the three desalination plants are partially functional, and many Gazans survive in brackish waters, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Damage to desalination
Damage to factory roofs and walls
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs on April 8 show damage to a desalination plant in northern Gaza that has not been functioning since the start of the conflict, UNICEF said.
Damage to factory roofs and walls
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs on April 8 show damage to a desalination plant in northern Gaza that has not been functioning since the start of the conflict, UNICEF said.
Damage to factory roofs and walls
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs on April 8 show damage to a desalination plant in northern Gaza that has not been functioning since the start of the conflict, UNICEF said.
It could take decades to undo all this damage.
Georgina McAllister, an assistant professor at Coventry University in the UK, said the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip faces an unprecedented path.
“In my 30 years of working as an expert on food and agricultural systems in conflict, I have never dealt with this level of devastation and instability.”
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methodology
To assess the extent of the damage to Gaza’s food infrastructure, the Post reviewed photographic and video evidence, analyzed satellite imagery and spoke to experts.
He Yin, a satellite imagery analyst and assistant professor at Kent State University, used a machine learning program to identify and assess damage visible in satellite images to identify impacts to tree crops and greenhouses.
Yin manually checked 1,200 randomly distributed samples on Planet Labs’ high-resolution satellite imagery. He estimates his confidence rate at 95 percent. To understand the level of damage to farmland across Gaza, the Post mapped data from the United Nations Satellite Center (UNOSAT). The data was obtained by performing and comparing Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) analysis on satellite images from April 24 this year. This is in contrast to his April images from the past seven years.
Satellite imagery included in this article was provided by Planet Labs.
About this story
Design and development by Talia Trackim. Additional development by Frank Hulley-Jones. Edited by Reem Akkad, Leila Berhouti, Elise Samuels. Design edited by Junne Alcantara. Photo editing by Olivier Laurent.
