When many people think about Gaza, they picture collapsed buildings, overcrowded shelters, and diplomatic statements. Rarely do they picture orchards.
They do not imagine the olive trees that took decades to mature. They do not see citrus groves that once perfumed the spring air or fields that carried generations of agricultural knowledge from grandparents to grandchildren. They do not picture the farmer who knows every curve of his land the way a sailor knows the sea.
Yet perhaps nowhere is the story of Gaza written more quietly—or more truthfully—than in its farmlands.
Agriculture has never been merely an economic sector in Gaza. Every olive tree, fig orchard, and greenhouse represents continuity in a place where Palestinians have long been denied the stability necessary for continuity to develop. A family can lose a house and rebuild it; an uprooted road can be repaired. But an orchard planted thirty years ago cannot simply be replaced with another tomorrow.
Before the genocide, agriculture was one of the pillars of Gaza’s economy. Prior to the start of the war, agriculture accounted for approximately 11 percent of Gaza’s economy, with more than 560,000 people relying on the industry to earn a living. Local farming represented both economic resilience and a measure of independence. Now, more than 87 percent of Gaza’s cropland remains damaged, according to a joint assessment by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the United Nations Satellite Center. Agricultural production has collapsed, food prices have risen, tens of thousands of agricultural jobs have disappeared, and Gaza’s food security crisis has deepened dramatically. What once supplied roughly half of the food consumed in Gaza has been reduced to another front in the struggle for survival, rather than cultivation.
International discussions about farming in Gaza frequently reduce agriculture to statistics: the number of acres damaged, crop yields lost, percentages of Palestinians facing food insecurity. Those numbers help humanitarian agencies estimate need and governments calculate aid—but numbers also flatten reality.
One acre is not simply a unit of land—it might contain hundreds of trees planted by a grandfather who is no longer alive. Its crop might have paid the tuition for a daughter’s university education. It might provide work for an entire extended family. It might preserve seed varieties adapted over generations to survive in Gaza’s soil and climate. When farmland disappears, a community loses more than production. It loses accumulated knowledge that cannot be delivered in aid relief packages.
Farmlands located within Israel’s Orange and Yellow Lines are now under Israeli military control, inaccessible to their stewards and heavily degraded through repeated clearing and destruction during conflict and military operations. Those who have managed to return to parts of their land say recovery remains painfully out of reach. Many have lost at least some of their land and face severe shortages of seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides due to tight Israeli restrictions on the entry of agricultural supplies.
Agricultural expert Nabil Abu Shamala said the sector in Gaza is experiencing a “widespread collapse” due to the destruction of infrastructure. He estimates that only about 7 percent of the enclave’s farmland remains under cultivation, while more than 60 percent now lies within areas controlled by the Israeli military, making access either impossible or life-threatening.
Zuhair Quzaat once depended on the harvest from his land to support his family. Today, his fields lie close to the expanding Israeli military zone.
“I don’t have the courage to go there,” he told Al Jazeera in May. “Whenever I look toward the Yellow zone, I’m afraid. This is not a life. Everything has been destroyed—our irrigation network, our livelihood, our savings. We no longer know how we’re supposed to survive.”
Human rights organizations have repeatedly warned that attacks against farmers and agricultural land have contributed to the collapse of Gaza’s food production system. The killing of farmers, the destruction of orchards, and the denial of safe access to farmland have been cited as factors accelerating starvation and undermining the territory’s ability to sustain itself.
Awad Rajab, a farmer from Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, returned to his home after being displaced, hoping to revive what remained of his family’s land. Instead, he has found himself farming much as his grandparents once had, without modern technology and agricultural techniques.
“We’re working with methods from fifty years ago, by hand,” he told Al Jazeera in March 2025. “We can’t restore the land to what it was before the war. We need pesticides, but there aren’t any in Gaza. The weeds and insects have multiplied. Pumping water has become incredibly expensive. Before the war, I relied on solar power. Now, running irrigation for a single hour costs me more than 100 shekels [about $30 USD].”
Farmers say even crops once closely associated with Gaza have become luxuries. Strawberries, once among Gaza’s best-known exports, are now imported into the Strip at prices many families cannot afford. Those who are able to continue farming do so with limited resources to preserve a minimum level of production. Healthy soil depends on years of biological balance. Irrigation networks require maintenance. Fruit trees mature over decades. Pollinators return only when ecosystems remain intact. Agricultural landscapes cannot simply be switched off during wars and restarted afterward like factories might.
With chemical fertilizers largely unavailable, many farmers have turned to locally produced alternatives using treated animal manure. They acknowledge that these substitutes are insufficient to restore productivity but say they have little choice if they are to keep planting at all.
When fields become inaccessible or unusable, entire cultural calendars are disrupted. Harvest festivals disappear. Seasonal employment vanishes. Children no longer learn how to prune vines or recognize healthy soil. That makes every damaged orchard more than an environmental loss: It becomes a question about what kind of future remains possible.
Mainstream media around the world often frames conversations about reconstruction around the need for concrete and steel materials for infrastructure redevelopment. These are indispensable—homes, schools, hospitals, and roads must all be rebuilt. But reconstruction planning should also consider another question: Who will cultivate tomorrow? If farming becomes impossible or economically unsustainable, rebuilding houses alone cannot restore community life. Food security is inseparable from dignity.
Restoring Gaza’s agricultural landscape requires making farming possible again. That begins with safe and sustained access to agricultural land, including areas that have become inaccessible through military control and repeated displacement.
Farmers also need reliable access to irrigation water, electricity, or affordable energy to pump it, agricultural machinery, fertilizers, pesticides, veterinary services, and the freedom to import essential farming supplies without prolonged restrictions. Rebuilding irrigation canals, clearing unexploded ordnance where necessary, rehabilitating damaged soils, and replanting orchards that require years to mature are all part of a recovery process that cannot be accomplished in a single growing season. Environmental recovery through the protection of groundwater and preservation of local seed varieties is essential.
Restoration also depends on restoring farmers themselves. Thousands have lost not only their land but also their savings, equipment, livestock, and markets.
Throughout the genocide, communities in Gaza have been praised for their resilience, as though endurance were an endless natural resource. But resilience is not infinite. A tree survives one drought. Perhaps two. Not every season. Eventually, resilience and continued survival require conditions that allow for recovery—even the healthiest soil needs rest, even the strongest tree requires water. Expecting communities to remain permanently resilient while the foundations of their livelihoods disappear misunderstands resilience itself. It transforms admiration into expectation and expectation into neglect.
Reviving agriculture therefore requires long-term investment in local farming cooperatives, financial support for small producers, and policies that allow Palestinian farmers to regain economic independence rather than remain permanently dependent on food aid. Food sovereignty is ultimately not only about producing food—it is about restoring people’s ability to decide how they cultivate their land, sustain their communities, and shape their own future.
There is something profoundly symbolic about a farmer planting a tree. The act assumes the future. It assumes that someone will harvest fruit years from now. Perhaps that is why orchards possess a moral significance beyond economics: They embody trust in a tomorrow that deserves preparation. When those orchards disappear, something intangible disappears alongside them: confidence in permanence.
Long after military operations end and diplomatic communiqués are forgotten, the land will remain. The soil will remember whether it was protected or neglected.
Reconstruction will ultimately be measured not only by how many homes are rebuilt, but by whether Palestinian farmers can once again cultivate their own land, feed their communities, and reclaim the food sovereignty that makes lasting recovery possible. Without that, rebuilding risks producing dependency rather than renewal.