Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Reading and Panel Discussion

“A timely and essential addition for understanding the multi-layered story of Gaza and Palestine. Beyond the familiar warfare in Gaza, the book presents a unique tale of Israeli violence to re-engineer the Palestinian environment” Ahmad Amara, lawyer and lecturer, Al-Quds University

“Provides a much-needed historical context to understand unfolding events in light of the long history of Palestinian liberation struggles through the lens of environmental history” Paulo Tavares, architect and author

The work is an exploration of Israeli eco-colonial warfare and the strategies of anti-colonial resistance adopted by Palestinians in Gaza as a result. It includes original maps, images, and visualizations. It collects new documents, original archival materials, stills of drone footage, first-hand testimonies of farmers, organizers, and protesters, and documents that affected vegetation in Gaza as “silent witnesses” to Israeli settler-colonial violence. Since 2014, the bulldozing of Palestinian lands by Israeli occupation forces has been complemented by the unannounced aerial spraying of military herbicides, extending the reach of Israeli colonial violence into the realm of chemical warfare. The spraying has destroyed entire swaths of arable land in Gaza, contributing to decades-long practices that have forcibly changed a once-lush Palestinian landscape.

As a result of the current conflict and the wholesale destruction of Gaza, Molavi's work takes on a whole new level of urgency.

is a writer and scholar in political science and urban studies. She is a dedicated Palestine-Israel researcher at Forensic Architecture, an independent research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Human Rights at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. She is the author of Stateless Citizenship: The Palestinian-Arab Citizens of Israel (2013).

is a South American architect, researcher, and writer. Tavares's design and pedagogical practice spans different territories, social geographies, and media. In 2017, Paulo Tavares created the autonomous agency, a platform dedicated to urban research and intervention. Tavares is a long-term collaborator of Forensic Architecture and was a fellow at the Canadian Center for Architecture (2018-2019). He co-curated the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial.

is a South African journalist based in Johannesburg and New York City, covering US foreign policy, Islamophobia, and race for the Middle East Eye. He is the author of , published by Pluto Press in 2023.

Michelle Téllez is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona. Her public and academic scholarship focuses on transnational community formations, mothering, and gendered migration along the U.S./Mexico borderlands

This event will raise funds for Ain Media Gaza, the organization without which the book wouldn't have been possible, co-founded by martyred friend of the author Rushdi Al Sarraj, and to whom there is a tribute in the book. Ticket donations will be split beteween Ain Media Gaza and Bluestockings to support their community work in the Lower East Side

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Bluestockings Cooperative Bookstore, 116 Suffolk Street, New York, United States