Gaza, also called Gaza City, is a city in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. As of 2022, it was the largest city in the State of Palestine, with 590,481 inhabitants in 2017. The city is spread across an area of 45 square kilometres (17 sq mi). Gaza is one of the principal coastal cities in the country, home to Palestine's only port. Located some 76.6 kilometres (47.6 mi) southwest of the country's proclaimed capital East Jerusalem, the city is located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Prior to the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, it was the most populous city in the State of Palestine, when massive displacement happened during the war.
An environmental disaster or ecological disaster is defined as a catastrophic event regarding the natural environment that is due to human activity. This point distinguishes environmental disasters from other disturbances such as natural disasters and intentional acts of war such as nuclear bombings.
The IDF Caterpillar D9 — nicknamed Doobi — is a Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It is supplied by Caterpillar Inc. and modified by the Israel Defense Forces, Israeli Military Industries and Israel Aerospace Industries to increase the survivability of the bulldozer in hostile environments and enable it to withstand attack.
Human impact on the environment refers to changes to biophysical environments and to ecosystems, biodiversity, and natural resources caused directly or indirectly by humans. Modifying the environment to fit the needs of society is causing severe effects including global warming, environmental degradation, mass extinction and biodiversity loss, ecological crisis, and ecological collapse. Some human activities that cause damage to the environment on a global scale include population growth, neoliberal economic policies and rapid economic growth, overconsumption, overexploitation, pollution, and deforestation. Some of the problems, including global warming and biodiversity loss, have been proposed as representing catastrophic risks to the survival of the human species.
Major environmental issues in Syria include deforestation, overgrazing, soil erosion, desertification, water pollution from the dumping of raw sewage and wastes from petroleum refining, and inadequate supplies of potable water.
Ecocide is the destruction of the environment by humans. Ecocide threatens all human populations who are dependent on natural resources for maintaining ecosystems and ensuring their ability to support future generations. The Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide describes it as "unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts".
A nuclear holocaust, also known as a nuclear apocalypse, nuclear annihilation, nuclear armageddon, or atomic holocaust, is a theoretical scenario where the mass detonation of nuclear weapons causes widespread destruction and radioactive fallout, with global consequences. Such a scenario envisages large parts of the Earth becoming uninhabitable due to the effects of nuclear warfare, potentially causing the collapse of civilization, the extinction of humanity, or the termination of most biological life on Earth. Global fallout from widespread testing of nuclear weapons has caused until 2000 up to 2.4 million deaths, with some calling this testing genocide or ecocide.
Jabalia Camp is a Palestinian refugee camp established in 1948 by the United Nations to house those displaced by the 1948 Palestinian expulsion. Located 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) north of Jabalia in the Gaza Strip, it is the largest refugee camp in Palestinian territory, with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Due to Israeli attacks during the Israel–Hamas war, the refugee camp was described as "destroyed".
The restrictions on movement and goods in Gaza imposed by Israel date to the early 1990s. After Hamas took over in 2007, Israel significantly intensified existing movement restrictions and imposed a complete blockade on the movement of goods and people in and out of the Gaza Strip. In the same year, Egypt closed the Rafah crossing point. The blockade's current stated aim is to prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza; previously stated motivations have included exerting economic pressure on Hamas. Human rights groups have called the blockade illegal and a form of collective punishment, as it restricts the flow of essential goods, contributes to economic hardship, and limits Gazans' freedom of movement. The blockade and its effects have led to the territory being called an "open-air prison".
There are multiple humanitarian, medical, economic, and industrial effects of the 2008–2009 Gaza War which started with the Israeli air strikes on 27 December 2008 and ended on 18 January with a cease-fire implemented unilaterally by Israel, and later the same day by Hamas and other Palestinian factions. The cease-fire followed twenty-two days of bombardment by land, sea and air which left over 1,300 Palestinians dead and over 5,000 injured, and the death of 13 Israelis. The United Nations Development Programme warned that there will be long-term consequences of the attacks on Gaza because the livelihoods and assets of tens of thousands of Gaza civilians have been affected.
Study of the environmental impact of war focuses on the modernization of warfare and its increasing effects on the environment. Scorched earth methods have been used for much of recorded history. However, the methods of modern warfare cause far greater devastation on the environment. The progression of warfare from chemical weapons to nuclear weapons has increasingly created stress on ecosystems and the environment. The military sector is responsible for around 5.5% of global GHG emissions, which are not included in GHG assesments on global and country level. Specific examples of the environmental impact of war include World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Rwandan Civil War, the Kosovo War, the Gulf War, and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Agricultural pollution refers to biotic and abiotic byproducts of farming practices that result in contamination or degradation of the environment and surrounding ecosystems, and/or cause injury to humans and their economic interests. The pollution may come from a variety of sources, ranging from point source water pollution to more diffuse, landscape-level causes, also known as non-point source pollution and air pollution. Once in the environment these pollutants can have both direct effects in surrounding ecosystems, i.e. killing local wildlife or contaminating drinking water, and downstream effects such as dead zones caused by agricultural runoff is concentrated in large water bodies.
Health in the State of Palestine should be addressed by the healthcare system in the State of Palestine. There are problems arising from difficulty of access, water scarcity while burden of non-communicable diseases in Palestine is high; the problems are compounded in Gaza.
Nuclear famine is a hypothesized famine considered a potential threat following global or regional nuclear exchange. It is thought that even subtle cooling effects resulting from a regional nuclear exchange could have a substantial impact on agriculture production, triggering a food crisis amongst the world's survivors.
The treadmill of destruction refers to the global phenomenon that the past and on-going military activities/expenditures and societal-environmental interactions, warrants for the significant degradation of the environment. With the modernization of warfare present today, the rapid advancement of mass destructive weapons, along with the magnitude of the war, signify the amount of major factors to the substantial stress and toll that militarisation has created on co-existing ecosystems and environments. Although the negative impacts of the environment posed by that militarisation are succinct, societal-environmental interactions have also contributed to the precedent series of environmental crises that society encounters today, which are overlooked and to an extent, ignored.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to ongoing widespread and possibly serious and long-term environmental damage. The Ukrainian government, journalists and international observers describe the damage as ecocide.
The population of the Gaza Strip is at high risk of famine as a result of Israeli airstrikes during the Gaza war and an Israeli blockade, including of basic essentials and humanitarian aid. Airstrikes have destroyed food infrastructure, such as bakeries, mills, and food stores, and there is a widespread scarcity of essential supplies due to the blockade of aid. According to a group of UN experts, as of July 2024 Israel's "targeted starvation campaign" had spread throughout the entire Gaza Strip, causing the death of children. Israel's mission to the UN criticized the statement, calling it "misinformation". The same month, detected cases of childhood malnutrition in northern Gaza increased by 300 percent compared to May 2024.
The bombing of the Gaza Strip is an ongoing aerial bombardment campaign on the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Air Force during the Israel–Hamas war. During the bombing, Israeli airstrikes killed thousands of civilians and militants, and damaged or destroyed Palestinian schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and other civilian infrastructure including refugee camps.
The destruction of cultural heritage during the ongoing Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip has included the damage and destruction by Israel of hundreds of culturally or historically significant buildings, libraries, museums and other repositories of knowledge in Gaza, alongside the destruction of intangible cultural heritage. By late January 2024, more than half of the buildings in Gaza had been damaged or destroyed and 1.7 million people displaced.
Attacks on protected zones and civilians in Gaza during the Israel–Hamas war have led to the killing of over 30,000 Palestinians and the displacement of over 2 million people, as well as the collapse of the education system and the destruction of most homes and hospitals in Gaza. Israel has faced accusations of war crimes from South Africa, the UN Human Rights Council, and Amnesty International, among others, due to the number of civilian casualties and the percentage of civilian infrastructure destroyed, including Palestinian refugee camps, schools, mosques, churches, and more. Analysis of satellite data shows that 80% of buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or ruined. As of January 2024, researchers from Oregon State University and the City University of New York estimated that 50 to 62 percent of all buildings in the Gaza Strip were damaged or destroyed.
