The orchards and greenhouses that once fed Gaza have been reduced to a patchwork of bare soil and rubble, with satellite data now indicating that roughly 98 Percent of Gaza’s tree crops are gone. What was once a dense belt of olives, citrus and other perennials has been systematically dismantled, leaving a territory that is not only in ruins but also stripped of its long term capacity to grow food.
The collapse of this tree based agriculture is not an abstract environmental loss, it is a direct assault on food security, livelihoods and the possibility of recovery. With cropland across the Gaza Strip now largely unusable and key water and soil systems heavily damaged, the destruction of orchards is emerging as one of the clearest indicators that this war is reshaping the territory’s landscape for years to come.
From orchards to empty fields: what the satellites actually show
When I look at the latest remote sensing work, the scale of Gaza’s agricultural collapse is stark. A recent analysis of high resolution imagery found that 98 Percent of Gaza’s tree based cropland has been wiped out, a figure that covers olives, citrus, almonds and other perennial crops that once anchored rural livelihoods. The same research tracks how orchards and greenhouses were progressively erased across the enclave, with some governorates losing virtually all of their tree cover as bombardment, bulldozing and access restrictions intensified.
That picture is reinforced by another detailed analysis of tree cropland and greenhouses in Gaza, which mapped the damage governorate by governorate and showed how entire belts of orchards in areas such as the governorate of Deir al Balah have been flattened. The work, described as an analysis of tree cropland loss, makes clear that this is not scattered damage but a near total removal of a key agricultural system.
How researchers turned raw imagery into a damage map
The numbers behind Gaza’s agricultural devastation are not guesswork, they come from methodical processing of satellite data. One team built a harmonic model of vegetation patterns to evaluate war induced damage to agricultural land use in Gaza, comparing pre war cycles of greening and harvest with the abrupt collapse in plant cover after the latest escalation between Israel and Hamas. By using this kind of time series approach, the researchers could distinguish normal seasonal changes from the sudden, conflict driven disappearance of crops across the territory.
Another group, working on a Cropland and Greenhouses Damage Assessment, drew on more than 900 m class and very high resolution images to track how fields and structures changed over time. That Assessment combined optical and radar data to detect where orchards had been uprooted, where plastic covered tunnels had been shredded and where soil surfaces had been compacted or cratered, providing a granular view of the impact on agricultural productivity. The project’s Cropland and Greenhouses Damage Assessment shows how remote sensing has become a primary tool for documenting damage in places that are largely inaccessible to independent observers.
From early warnings to near total collapse
The destruction of Gaza’s orchards did not come out of nowhere, it accelerated on top of an already deteriorating agricultural base. Earlier in the conflict, a geospatial analysis of cropland damage found that 67.6 percent of Gaza’s cropland had already been affected, with the study noting that this satellite based analysis was critical for understanding how the fighting was undermining the daily food needs of Gaza’s people. That early warning, captured in an analysis of cropland damage, showed a landscape sliding toward crisis even before the latest wave of orchard destruction pushed it over the edge.
By the time more recent assessments were completed, the situation had tipped into what food security experts now describe as a near total shutdown of local production. One major review of conditions in the Gaza Strip reports that 98.5 percent of cropland is now unavailable for cultivation, with large areas designated as “no go” zones and fields either physically destroyed or cut off from farmers. That figure, 98.5 percent, is not just a statistic, it is a measure of how thoroughly the territory’s cropland has been taken out of use, as documented in the Gaza Strip: 98.5 percent assessment.
Tree crops, famine risk and a “Catastrophic” food crisis
Tree crops matter in Gaza because they are the backbone of a diet and an economy that cannot be quickly rebuilt. Olives, citrus and other perennials provide calories, cooking oil, fruit and export income, and they do so year after year without the need for constant replanting. When 98 Percent of that system is destroyed, the loss is not just this season’s harvest but a decade or more of future production, since new trees take years to mature and bear at scale.
The wider food security picture is already dire. The same review that found 98.5 percent of cropland unavailable describes the situation as a Catastrophic food crisis, with the latest data showing that 39 percent of people are going days without eating and that food production cannot be reactivated under current conditions. Those figures, including the 39 percent of households skipping meals for days, are drawn from an Aug Catastrophic assessment that links the collapse of cropland, including orchards, directly to the looming risk of famine.
Environmental damage that goes far beyond the fields
The loss of tree crops is only one part of a broader environmental breakdown that is now feeding into Gaza’s humanitarian emergency. A major review of environmental damage in the Gaza Strip finds that Freshwater supplies are severely limited and that much of what remains is polluted, with sewage, debris and fuel spills contaminating aquifers and surface water. Among the key findings is that much of Gaza’s vegetation has been stripped away, leaving bare soil that is more vulnerable to erosion, dust storms and further degradation.
Those environmental shifts have direct consequences for human health and food production. Without trees to stabilize the soil and shade the ground, temperatures in fields rise, moisture evaporates more quickly and the microclimates that once supported crops begin to disappear. The same review warns that these changes are harming human health and threatening the survival of those already in a food emergency, a conclusion captured in the Sep Among the Freshwater Gaza assessment of environmental damage.
What life looked like before the orchards were razed
To understand what has been lost, I find it useful to recall how Gaza’s farms looked before the current phase of destruction. Visual reporting from the territory showed thriving olive groves, strawberry fields and greenhouses bursting with tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs, a dense mosaic of small plots that squeezed high yields out of limited land. Those images, captured in coverage of Aug Gaza agriculture, underline that this was not marginal land but a productive, intensively managed system that supported families and supplied local markets.
In that earlier landscape, tree crops were central. Olives lined field boundaries, citrus orchards filled low lying areas and trellised vines shaded walkways and courtyards, creating a layered agro ecosystem that combined perennials with seasonal vegetables. The contrast between those scenes and today’s satellite images of stripped fields and shattered greenhouses is stark, a shift documented in reports such as the Aug Gaza video that now reads like a record of a vanished world.
How conflict between Israel and Hamas reshaped land use
The transformation of Gaza’s agricultural landscape is inseparable from the dynamics of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Researchers examining land use change in Gaza have highlighted how repeated rounds of fighting, movement restrictions and the creation of buffer zones have progressively squeezed farmers off their land. In their Highlights, they describe using a harmonic model to quantify how the Israel and Hamas conflict has altered agricultural land use, showing that areas closest to the frontier and key military positions have seen the steepest declines in vegetation.
Those findings help explain why the destruction of tree crops is so geographically uneven, with some zones almost entirely cleared while others retain fragments of orchards. The same study of agricultural land in Gaza notes that war induced damage is not limited to direct strikes but also includes the indirect effects of access bans, unexploded ordnance and the disruption of irrigation and input supply chains. By tying these patterns to specific phases of the conflict, the Highlights Israel Hamas Gaza research shows how policy and military decisions have translated into the near erasure of a once dense agricultural fabric.
From 67.6 percent damaged to 98.5 percent unusable
One of the most telling aspects of the satellite record is how quickly Gaza’s cropland moved from being heavily damaged to almost entirely unusable. Earlier in the war, a detailed geospatial review found that 67.6 percent of Gaza’s cropland had been damaged, a figure that already implied severe stress on local food supplies. That assessment, completed as of 1 September 2024, stressed that the damage was undermining the ability of agriculture to meet the daily needs of Gaza’s people, a warning that now reads as a prelude to the current collapse.
Within roughly a year, that picture hardened into something closer to total shutdown. The later finding that 98.5 percent of cropland is unavailable for cultivation in the Gaza Strip shows how quickly remaining pockets of production were either destroyed or cut off, leaving only tiny fragments of land still able to function. When I compare the 67.6 percent damaged figure from the Oct review with the 98.5 percent unusable figure from the later Gaza Strip assessment, the trajectory is clear: a system that was badly hurt has been pushed into near total collapse.
Why rebuilding Gaza’s tree crops will take years
Even if the fighting stopped tomorrow, the destruction of Gaza’s tree crops would not be quickly reversed. Perennial agriculture is slow to rebuild, because olives, citrus and other trees require years of growth before they produce at commercial scale. Farmers would need secure access to land, saplings, irrigation equipment and inputs, as well as confidence that their new orchards would not be uprooted again before they mature, conditions that are far from guaranteed in the current environment.
On top of that, the broader environmental damage complicates any recovery plan. With Freshwater supplies in Gaza already severely constrained and much of the remaining water polluted, as highlighted in the Sep Among the Freshwater Gaza assessment, irrigating new orchards becomes both technically and financially challenging. Soil compaction, contamination from debris and unexploded ordnance, and the loss of windbreaks and shade trees all make it harder for young plants to survive. In that context, the satellite based finding that 98 Percent of tree crops are gone is not just a snapshot of present loss, it is a warning that without major, sustained investment and a fundamental shift in security conditions, Gaza’s orchards may not return for a generation.
The politics of counting trees from space
There is also a political dimension to the way these satellite figures are being used. Remote sensing offers a level of objectivity that is hard to dismiss, especially when multiple teams, using different sensors and methods, converge on similar conclusions about the scale of damage. The Cropland and Greenhouses Damage Assessment that drew on more than 900 m class and very high resolution images, the harmonic model based Highlights of agricultural land use change, and the tree specific analysis that found 98 Percent of orchards destroyed all point in the same direction, even if they focus on different aspects of the landscape.
At the same time, these numbers are now feeding into debates about accountability, reparations and the concept of “ecocide” in Gaza. Visual reporting that contrasted thriving pre war farms with today’s stripped fields, such as the Aug Gaza coverage, has been paired with the hard metrics from satellite based analysis to argue that the destruction of agriculture is not collateral damage but a systematic dismantling of the territory’s capacity to sustain itself. The recent Satellite Data Shows Percent of Gaza Tree Crops Are Now Destroyed By Israel Maps report, which frames the loss of orchards in explicitly political terms, illustrates how technical assessments are being drawn into wider arguments over the conduct and long term aims of the war.
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