On Friday, 12th September, Herzi Halevi (the Commander of the Israeli Defence Forces for the first 17 months of the military occupation of Gaza) calmly confirmed that 200,000 Palestinians have now been killed or injured. That’s 10% of the entire population of Gaza. Of the 64,000 official deaths, more than 70% have been women and children.
On 16th September, an official UN Commission of Enquiry confirmed that Israel has committed genocide against the people of Palestine in Gaza. On 18th September, a deadline set by the UN General Assembly for Israel to terminate its illegal occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, expired.
How is it possible that these developments have still not jolted Western governments into formally acknowledging that there is a genocide going on in Gaza, week in, week out? Tragically, we know the answer to that question: Western governments’ direct complicity in that genocide is there for all to see. Recognising the State of Palestine does literally nothing to address that outrage: supporting a state that has lost its land is the cruellest of deceptions.
So, here’s a harder question. How is it that none of the major environmental NGOs in the UK has been campaigning to denounce the simultaneous ECOCIDE (“unlawful acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe long term damage to the environment”) going on in Gaza? As well as killing people at will, Israel set out systematically, from the start, to destroy every last part of Palestine’s environment and agriculture.
Right up front, please read this astonishingly powerful article by George Monbiot, in the Guardian on September 27th. The ruthless, systematic nature of this assault is devastating. If you were uncertain before now what ecocide really amounts to, you’ll be in no doubt having read this article: 95% of farmland laid waste; between 65% and 95% of orchards, olive plantations and woodlands put to the chainsaw; wate, waste and sewage infrastructure totally destroyed, with 100,000m3 ending up in the sea every day; between 50 and 100,000,000 tonnes of toxics, asbestos, uranium, heavy metals etc from bombs and missiles contaminating every last inch of Gaza.
George’s article draws on the campaigning work of Mazin Qumsiyeh, whose recent article in The Ecologist will have shocked many environmentalists. Qumsiyeh has been a brave and steadfast environmental advocate for the Palestinian environment for many years — exactly the kind of courageous campaigning that we love to lionise here in the UK.
The overarching horror of the genocide going on in Gaza renders almost all else invisible. But for Palestinians today, and for all future Palestinians, we must ensure that the killing fields of Palestine become the ultimate proving ground for ecocide law. And for the increasingly influential campaign to Stop Ecocide.
Jonathon Porritt
30 September 2025
