Averting an Environmental Catastrophe. How?

CrossFireArabia
Features
December 29, 2025

Amid staggering immediate needs, widespread trauma and mounting medical complications, what is unfolding in Gaza is not only a humanitarian catastrophe. It is an ecological collapse, one that threatens the very possibility of recovery and will affect Gaza’s population for generations to come.

While the human suffering is visible and relentless, the environmental devastation is less apparent and harder to grasp. Yet it is no less catastrophic. The human cost of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, launched after the Hamas attack on 7 October, is being compounded by a rapidly escalating environmental crisis.

The destruction of essential civilian infrastructure — including water, sewage and waste management systems — has led to long-term toxic contamination of land and sea, posing severe health and environmental risks. Israel’s bombardment has filled Gaza’s landscape with a lethal mix of shattered concrete, asbestos dust and polluted water.

Olive groves and farmland have been flattened. Soil and groundwater are contaminated by munitions and toxins. The sea is choked with untreated sewage and waste, while the air is thick with smoke and fine particulate matter. Gaza’s environment is in freefall: poisoned water, ruined croplands and a shattered power grid are pushing the territory to the brink.

The United Nations and global medical and human rights organisations have repeatedly warned of famine, forced starvation, widespread environmental destruction and near-constant bombardment, citing grave violations of international law and describing Israel’s assault as genocidal.

As of late 2025, Gaza continues to endure a catastrophic environmental disaster that persists despite successive ceasefire agreements. Even after the latest ceasefire came into effect on 10 October, conditions on the ground have remained largely unchanged. Israeli air and artillery strikes continue, alongside the illegal destruction of civilian homes and reports of Israeli troops shooting Palestinian civilians.

Pollution is pervasive, in the air people breathe, the water they bathe in and drink, the food they consume and the surroundings in which they live. Israel’s war on Gaza has not only levelled neighbourhoods, displaced families repeatedly and crippled medical facilities, but has also poisoned the land and water upon which Gazans depend.

Much of Gaza’s agricultural land has been destroyed, leaving the territory in a state of severe food insecurity and famine, with food increasingly used as a weapon. Alongside the devastation of water, sewage and hospital infrastructure, Israel continues to restrict the entry of food, tents, warm clothing and life-saving medical supplies, leaving millions without basic necessities.

Children, in particular, are bearing the brunt. They are growing up amid one of the world’s most acute humanitarian crises, without adequate shelter, sanitation or warm clothing, and facing alarming levels of acute malnutrition.

Freshwater supplies are now severely limited, and much of what remains is unsafe. The collapse of sewage treatment facilities, the destruction of piped systems and the use of cesspits for sanitation have almost certainly contaminated the aquifer that supplies much of Gaza’s water, contributing to a surge in infectious diseases.

The scale and potential longevity of this damage have prompted calls for the destruction to be recognised as “ecocide” and investigated as a possible war crime. According to official estimates, Israeli forces have killed more than 70,000 Palestinians during more than two years of war. The UN estimates that 90 per cent of Gaza’s population has been displaced, with more than 1.5 million people in urgent need of shelter.

Environmental devastation, from heavily polluted water to the suspected impact of toxic weapons, has deepened an already apocalyptic humanitarian crisis. Flooding rains, combined with the lack of safe drinking water and even basic hygiene facilities such as handwashing, are accelerating the spread of disease. Health authorities are struggling to save lives, while essential medical supplies continue to be blocked from entering the enclave.

Unusually heavy rains, strong winds and flooding have further compounded the suffering, making conditions for displaced families even more dire. Months into a fragile ceasefire that has been repeatedly violated, the true scale of Gaza’s environmental destruction is becoming painfully clear — and the situation continues to deteriorate.

If this trajectory continues, it will leave a legacy of environmental damage that will undermine the health and wellbeing of Gaza’s population for generations. Ending the human suffering must be the immediate priority. Restoring freshwater systems, clearing debris and re-establishing essential services are urgently needed to save lives.

For Palestinians, neither safety nor reliable access to life-saving treatment or aid has materialised under the ceasefire. Beyond emergency relief, the recovery of vegetation, freshwater ecosystems and soil will be essential for food and water security. Gaza’s environmental recovery will depend on careful, inclusive and science-based planning, and on a political will to allow a future in which Gaza’s people can survive, rebuild and live with dignity.

The author Najla M. Shahwan is a contributor to The Jordan Times

CrossFireArabia

Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

Features

Wounders of Arabic

CrossFireArabia
February 20, 2026

EDITOR’S NOTE: I wrote this article “On Arabic” in 2008 and posted on hackwriters.com. I am reprinting it here for relvance and archival use

Compared with English, Arabic is an easy read if it is written well. When you look at English, the perception of the language, written and oral, took centuries of development from archaic structures associated with the old English of Geoffrey Chaucer, passing to Shakespeare and Christopher Marlow to George Elliot, Charles Dickens, Virginia Wolfe as well as many others and not mentioning the new contemporaries.

With Arabic it’s different. Although there may have been stages of development through out the centuries, it seems the clarity of the Arabic language was a one-time affair, represented in the Holy Koran brought down from the skies through Angel Gabriel to Prophet Mohammad in the 7th century and passed on to the Muslim community.

The Koran represented a basis for the Arabic language as it is spoken and written today. Unlike English, back in the 7th century Arabic was written in a clear, transparent, effective tone that involved action, and designed from every member of the social community, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, a source of knowledge and speech and continued to be so as it passed down through the centuries.

With English it was different. First if all, the language itself was derivative from other linguistic structures like Germanic, Latin, and French, many of which have said this is what made it stronger; Secondly English was helped by the issue of economic development as new inventions, processes and way of doing things required the development of new words, terminologies and syntax which evolved from the 17th century onwards.

Today some have been known to criticize Arabic for failing to be innovative, or developing to meet the needs of modernization and even globalization, with its inability to produce new words and terminologies to pace with the development going on in the region and the world.

However, one of the points that has to be clarified is that as these inventions came from the western countries and as communicated in English, the language proved more flexible in coming up with new words and terms, as opposed to the Arabic language that adopted a reactive approach with linguists from the region acting haphazardly in their word formations rather than following a methodical pattern.

In the process as well, we tend to get used to hearing the words and terminologies in say the English language and when we hear their equivalents in other languages such as Arabic, as there is a sense of word creation even in translations, it becomes odd and foreign simply because our ears have got used to the English pronunciation.

But this is a different view related to globalization, how much are we as Arabs integrated into the international system, how much we take from it, what do we take, what do we buy, our consumer habits and trends and indeed, how much do we produce and contribute to world society.

While this in turn becomes related to our language, its use, how much we mix words, English-Arabic, Arabic-English, the fact of the matter is that the language itself, spoken by about 300 million people in 22 Arab countries and about a 1.5 billion in Muslim countries who read the Koran in Arabic, says a great deal.

Arabic is a cogent force, its simple, attractive and gets the point across in as a logical manner as possible. It’s easy to read and to understand. It’s structure is less complex as say French and German which are grammatically more demanding than the English language.

However, just like any other language, writing in Arabic has to be learnt, it’s a professional skill; that’s why today there is an endless beating about the bush were getting the idea across is deliberately pumped and inflated and there is much hankering because of political considerations relating to ruler, government, state, security apparatuses and so on.

These considerations are over-riding and smack directly with the professionalism of writing and the way the writing of Arabic should be as passed on and continued through out the holy Koran which is sometimes used as a source of criticism by western writers and pedagogics who claim the Arabic language lacks the basis for producing new words as do the other languages.

But when Arabic is spoken and written as part of the social community there is a sense of modernist continuum as expressed in its words, expressions, figures of speech and syntax found in the structure of the language.

Nowhere is this more emphasized than it is in the Koran. Written in the 7th century, the Koran is timeless in its spiritual message, a modernist document in its approach with words, phrases and expressions that apply as much today as when it was handed down, memorized and collectively written.

Words and expression apply as much then as they apply today. The word “car” for instance is used in one of its Suras (chapters) to signify a caravan route whereas its use today implies a vehicle, and striking the reader as if you are reading a modern document about social relations, economy, authority, and kinship.

The style of language appears to be modernist as well and not with case as it is say with the Bible that is written in old English, not as old as the language used by Chaucer, but is hard to fathom just the same.

That has proved problematic for the Koran. When translated into English translators often use the kind of language that is employed by the Bible, which does not reflect the actual modernist style of the Koran for the lucidness of the holy document becomes lost and replaced by an archaic and medieval structure once found in the language, although English has moved on tremendously.

Features

Dad Digs For Family After Israel Bombs Their House

CrossFireArabia
February 15, 2026

Hammad’s house in the Sabra neighborhood was destroyed Dec. 6, 2023, during heavy Israeli bombardment. He said a powerful bomb weighing around 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms) struck the building while the family was inside.

On a mound of sand and shattered concrete that once formed the foundation of his six-story home in Gaza City, Mahmoud Hammad digs methodically through the debris, searching for the remains of his wife and children killed beneath the rubble.

Armed with little more than a small shovel and a metal sieve, the 45-year-old father filters sand by hand, hoping to find bone fragments that would allow him to lay his family to rest.

“In the absence of machinery, this is what we have,” he said, holding up the sieve.

Home reduced to dust

He lost his wife, six children, his brother, his brother’s wife and their four children.

Hammad survived but sustained severe injuries, including multiple rib fractures and injuries to his shoulder and pelvis. After months of partial recovery, he returned to the site to begin searching for his family’s remains.

“I wanted to bury them properly,” he said.

With the help of neighbors, he managed to retrieve and bury his brother and his brother’s family. But the bodies of his wife and children remain under layers of hardened debris.

“I collect what I can, piece by piece,” he said.

Missing under the rubble

Nearly 9,500 Palestinians are missing beneath destroyed buildings across the territory, according to official estimates in Gaza.

Officials said recovery efforts are severely hindered by the lack of heavy equipment needed to clear the debris. Despite a ceasefire that took effect in October, authorities said the entry of large-scale machinery remains restricted, limiting the ability of rescue teams to reach buried bodies.

Civil defense crews have repeatedly warned that the longer debris remains uncleared, the harder it becomes to recover remains.

Private grief amid mass destruction

Hammad said his wife was pregnant and close to delivery when the strike occurred, as medical services across Gaza were collapsing under the strain of the war.

“She and our unborn child died together,” he said.

Since December, Gaza has been battered by repeated storms that further displaced families living in makeshift shelters after their homes were destroyed.

For Hammad, however, the focus remains on the ruins before him.

Each day, he returns to sift through dust and fragments of concrete, driven by what he describes as a simple duty.

“They deserve to be buried with dignity,” he said.

At least 591 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,598 injured in Israeli attacks since a ceasefire deal took effect Oct. 10, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

‏Israel’s war on Gaza, which began Oct. 8, 2023, and lasted two years, has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and wounded over 171,000, most of them women and children, and destroyed about 90% of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.

By Tarek Chouiref in Istanbul for Anadolu