Gaza will remain in famine as long as we cannot cultivate our land The Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Last week, a ceasefire was announced after two years of genocide in Gaza. The bombs have stopped falling, but the devastation remains. The majority of homes, schools, hospitals, universities, factories and commercial buildings have been reduced to rubble. From above, Gaza looks like a gray desert of rubble, its vibrant urban spaces transformed into ghost towns, its fertile farmland and green spaces erased.

The occupier’s goal was not only to make the Palestinians in Gaza homeless, but also unable to support themselves. Uprooting the dispossessed and the poor, those who have lost their connection to the land, is of course much easier.

This was the goal when Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered the plot of land owned by my family in the eastern part of the Maghazi refugee camp and uprooted 55 olive trees, 10 palm trees and five fig trees.

This plot of land was offered to my refugee grandfather, Ali Al-Saloul, by its original owner as a place to take shelter during the Nakba of 1948. Ali, his wife Ghalia, and their children had just fled their village, Al-Maghar, as Zionist forces advanced on it. The caves, like Gaza today, have turned into ruins; The Zionists who committed the crime completed its erasure by creating a national park on its ruins – “Marar Hills National Park.”

Ali was a farmer and so were his ancestors. His livelihood always came from the land. When he settled in the new place, he quickly planted olive, palm, fig, and prickly pear trees. He made his home there and raised my parents, uncles, and aunts. In the end, my grandfather bought the land from its generous owner, in installments over many years. Thus, my family obtained a plot of land of 2,000 square meters (half an acre).

Although my father and his siblings married and moved out of their family home, this piece of land remained a favorite place to go, especially for me.

It was only two kilometers from our house in Al-Maghazi refugee camp. I enjoyed the 30-minute walk, part of which passed through a complete “forest”: a green space filled with clover, sycamore, jujube and olive trees, colorful birds, foxes, dogs on and off leashes, and numerous beehives.

Every fall, in October, when the olive picking season begins, my cousins, friends, and I would gather to pick olives. It was an occasion that brought us closer together. We would press olives and get 500 liters (130 gallons) of olive oil from the harvest. Figs and dates were made into jam for breakfast or suhoor during Ramadan.

For the rest of the year, I would meet my friends Ibrahim and Muhammad among the olive trees. We would make a small fire and prepare a kettle of tea to enjoy under the moonlight while we talked.

When the war started in 2023, our Earth became a dangerous place to go. The surrounding farms and olive groves were often bombed. Our plot was also bombed twice at the beginning of the war. As a result, we were unable to pick olives in 2023 and then again in 2024.

When famine hit Gaza in the summer, we started sneaking into the plot of land to get some fruit and some firewood for cooking, the price of which was two dollars a kilo. We knew that Israeli tanks might attack us at any moment, but we took the risk anyway.

Seven families – us, friends and neighbors – benefited from the fruits and wood of that land.

One day in late August, a friend of mine called me and told me a terrible rumor he had heard: Israeli tanks and bulldozers advanced into the eastern part of Maghazi and flattened everything, uprooting trees and burying them. I gasped. Our lifeline is gone.

Days later, the rumor was confirmed. The Israeli army uprooted more than 600 trees in the area, most of them olive trees. Those who fled the area shared what they saw. What was once a lush green plot of land has been razed and turned into a lifeless yellow desert.

Earlier in August, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) announced I mentioned 98.5 percent of agricultural land in Gaza has been damaged or has become difficult to access. I believe the destruction of our plot of land reduced the remaining 1.5 percent of land even further.

As Israel was completing the eradication of Palestinian agricultural lands, it began allowing commercial trucks, but not aid, into Gaza. The markets were filled with products packaged in Hebrew.

Israel was starving us, destroying our ability to grow our own food, and then forcing us to buy its products at exorbitant prices.

Ninety percent of Gaza’s population are unemployed and cannot buy an Israeli egg for five dollars or a kilo of dates for $13. It was another genocidal strategy that forced two million starving Palestinians in Gaza to choose between two terrible options: die of hunger or pay to prop up the Israeli economy.

Now, aid is supposed to finally start entering Gaza under the ceasefire agreement. This may come as a relief to many Palestinians suffering from hunger, but it is not a solution. Israel has made us completely dependent on aid, and is the only force that determines whether, when, and how much of it enters Gaza. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, 100% of Palestinians in Gaza suffer from some level of food insecurity.

Much of Gaza’s agricultural land remains out of reach, as Israel has withdrawn from just part of the Gaza Strip. My family will have to wait until the implementation of the third phase of the ceasefire agreement – if Israel agrees to implement it at all – to see the Israeli army withdraw to the buffer zone and regain access to our land.

We have now lost our land twice. Once in 1948, and now again in 2025. Israel wants to repeat history and expel us from our lands again. It is not permissible to allow more Palestinian lands to be converted into buffer zones and national parks.

Restoring, rehabilitating and cultivating our land is crucial not only to our survival, but also to maintaining our connection to the land. We must resist uprooting.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.