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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) |
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