Palestinian Environment Quality Authority: The occupation dropped more than 85,000 tons of bombs on Gaza Strip  

The Environment Quality Authority said that the Israeli occupation has dropped more than 85 tons of bombs on Gaza Strip since the beginning of the aggression on October 2023, which exceeds what was dropped in World War II.

It added in a statement on Wednesday, on the occasion of the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Military Conflict, that the occupation’s continuous bombing of Gaza Strip has caused the destruction of vast areas of agricultural land and the contamination of the soil with toxic chemicals that will hinder agriculture for decades.

The Environment Quality Authority pointed out that the occupation used in its ongoing aggression all types of weapons and shells, most notably white phosphorus, which is prohibited by international law under the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons, which targets environmental components, causing serious environmental damage that threatens the lives of humans and living organisms.

The Authority pointed out that the damage to the water resources infrastructure led to the leakage of polluted water into the groundwater basins, which threatens a health and environmental disaster that threatens hundreds of thousands of residents for generations to come.

In the West Bank, the Environment Quality Authority said that the settlements and the military training of the occupation forces pose a great danger to the Palestinian environment, as vast areas of land are subject to seizure, bulldozing, uprooting of trees and overgrazing, while the waste resulting from the occupation training damages water sources and pollutes the air, which leads to an exacerbation of environmental degradation, as it is estimated that the settlements pump about 40 million cubic meters of untreated wastewater annually into the Palestinian land.

The Environment Quality called on the United Nations and the international community to take urgent measures to stop the ongoing aggression and prevent the exploitation of the environment for military purposes, and to implement international laws, including the Geneva Protocol and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use of Environmental Modification Techniques for Military Purposes, to protect the environment and prevent its deterioration as a result of armed conflicts.

Rawaa Ghanam