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| A fire blazes in an olive grove in the village of Salim, in the occupied
West Bank, after an Israeli settler attack on 25 May 2025 (Jaafar
Ashtiyeh/AFP) |
22 September 2026
Israel's illegal occupation and destruction of Palestinian land are
incompatible with environment justice. Consumers must wake up to this
fact
For decades, Israel
has projected a narrative of being a beacon of sustainability. A major
part of this facade is its food tech industry, particularly its latest
advancements in lab-grown and cell-cultivated foods.
This past April, Israeli food tech company Celleste Bio reportedly produced the world’s first lab-grown chocolate bars. The company touts a proprietary technology that enables it to eliminate the cocoa industry’s “costly reliance on fragile rainforests”.
Celleste Bio is backed by Mondelez International,
a multibillion-dollar parent corporation of brands such as Cadbury and
Oreo, making the possibility of lab-grown chocolate on consumer shelves
closer than ever.
Israel has frequently been ranked
among the world’s top global food tech start-up nations. Its champions
assert that lab-grown foods require fewer resources than traditional
agriculture, and can offer alternatives to the slaughtering of animals -
all amid the continuing genocide and starvation campaign in Gaza.
Foodwashing, or the use of sustainable food harvesting methods to distract from crimes against humanity, is a key part of Israel’s broader greenwashing agenda. The state promotes “environmentally friendly” initiatives to mask its human rights abuses against Palestinians.
Yet Israel’s illegal occupation
and destruction of Palestinian land are incompatible with climate
justice, systematically wreaking havoc on the environment. Israel’s food
tech industry, as with all other aspects of the state, was built on the theft of Palestinian resources, undermining Palestinians’ own sustainability efforts.
The water and energy that Israel boasts about conserving are redirected from Palestinian communities, who are then denied access to their own natural resources.
Ecological collapse
Israel’s wars further damage the environment. In September 2025, the Palestinian Initiative for Climate Strategy found that Israel and its allies owe $148bn in “military and conflict-related climate reparations” to the Palestinian people, dating back to the 1948 Nakba. Since then, Israel has continued bombing Gaza.
Throughout Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, it has dropped more than 200,000 tonnes of explosives on the enclave, resulting in ecological collapse. In July, an Oxfam-commissioned report
found that over the past three years, Gaza’s wastewater treatment
facilities have been decimated, fuelling an environmental and public
health crisis.
“Sewage treatment facilities have been destroyed, resulting in the
discharge of hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of untreated
wastewater daily into the environment and the Mediterranean Sea,
creating both a public health emergency and an ecological catastrophe
with consequences extending well beyond Gaza’s borders,” the report
noted.
Israel’s determination to destroy the environment across occupied
Palestine long predates the current genocide, including through its
routine practice of spraying chemical herbicides on Gaza’s agricultural lands, destroying thousands of dunums of farmland.
In addition, Israel’s policy of water apartheid actively harms the environment. Human rights organisation Al-Haq has explained
how Israel’s denial of fresh-water access pushes Palestinians to rely
on desalination, a process that “can cause substantial damage to marine
ecosystems and ocean health”.
At the same time, the Israeli occupation sabotages Palestinian sustainability practices. Najla Abdellatif, the founder of Zero Waste Palestine,
an environmental advocacy initiative, told Middle East Eye that she has
met affected Palestinian farmers whose groundwater sources were
diverted by Israel’s state-run water company.
“Their water pipes are also continuously targeted and stolen by
nearby settlers, making them even more water insecure and unable to buy
back their own water sources at the elevated prices that are offered,”
Abdellatif said. “This is affecting their whole ability to sustain their
farms and their livelihoods.”
Resource deprivation
Israel’s cultivated foods industry further helps to normalise the occupation of Palestine... READ MORE https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/weapon-distraction-israel-greenwashing-detract-human-climate-crimes-Gaza
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