in the case of Israel and Palestine, the land that’s being fought over is changing in unmistakable ways—ways that are helping perpetuate a cycle of oppression and violence. Understanding how climate and this conflict are tied together is, for me and for many others, adding another layer of tragedy onto an already heartbreaking situation.
Israel and Palestine are located in one of the most climate-vulnerable areas in the world. Temperatures in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East are rising almost twice as fast as the global average, an international group of scientists concluded last year; they are expected to rise 0.81 degrees each decade through the end of the century. Simultaneously, precipitation in Middle Eastern and North African countries has declined by over 8 percent each decade since the 1980s.
Ecosystems aren’t beholden to borders; the environmental harms wrought on one population by the powerful government next door can sometimes boomerang. Israel’s control of water resources in the West Bank has helped create a huge sanitation problem that poses an immediate and dire threat to Palestinians but also a threat to Israelis, as untreated sewage flows from Gaza into the Mediterranean Sea. And while some communities living in the West Bank make a living burning electronic waste imported from Israel, the cancerous smoke is causing health problems on both sides of the border.
In recent years, international environmental groups have begun to emphasize the conditions in Palestine as not just a human rights issue but an environmental one.