It is rooted in our faith, our seasons of harvest, and our collective memory. It holds the bones of our ancestors, the labor of our farmers, and the hopes of generations yet to come. The land is life. But today, that land is being devastated—not only by bombs, but by a colonial system that seeks to eliminate us entirely.

As we mark Palestinian Land Day, we do so amidst the renewed horror of genocide. On March 18, Israel resumed its military assault on Gaza, killing over 500 Palestinians in a matter of days. Since October 2023, more than 62,614 Palestinians have been murdered. Thousands remain missing under the rubble. This is the textbook definition of systematic extermination and genocide, and there is no debate about it.

Israeli forces have re-entered Gaza, occupying the Netzarim corridor to bisect the Strip. This fragmentation is designed to dismantle life, dismantle governance, dismantle Gaza. Israel’s aim is to turn a homeland into an uninhabitable prison, and to redraw and erase the map of Palestine.

This renewed assault comes after Israel violated the ceasefire, blocked humanitarian aid, and refused any movement toward a future in which Palestinians govern their own land. While Palestinians held up their end of the ceasefire, Israel escalated. It bombed. It besieged. It denied the possibility of reconstruction, let alone justice.
Many are complicit in failing to uphold justice.

Since March 2, no humanitarian aid has entered Gaza. Over 1,535 trucks remain stuck in Egypt, and 311,000 pallets of aid are backed up across the region. Gaza’s crossings are sealed. Its storage hubs are within new evacuation zones. Its infrastructure is being methodically dismantled.

This is not a mere failure of coordination, but a logistics of extermination. It is a deliberate policy to starve and suffocate the population. Gaza is being denied food, fuel, water, medical supplies, and even the means to bury its dead. What is happening in Gaza is not separate from Israel’s colonial project, that extends beyond just Gaza, it is rather the core of it. It’s an acceleration of the “incremental genocide” at the core of the colony.

For decades, Israel has weaponized the land—bulldozing orchards, poisoning wells, and uprooting the ecosystems Palestinians have nurtured for generations. It builds over ruins, plants foreign trees where olives once stood, and calls it development. But there is nothing green about occupation.

What is happening in Gaza is ecocide. A systematic destruction of land, water, and air to make Palestinian life impossible. It is carried out through bombs, blockades, and bulldozers—and always under the false pretense of “security” or “defense.” It is part of a politically-engineered ploy, and is a pattern that has repeated itself since before 1948. This destruction of the ecological basis of existence  has long been a tactical tool for systemic oppression and dispossession.

And the world watches. As temperatures rise and disasters multiply, a "just transition” fails to find itself in Gaza. The same governments withholding climate finance to the Global South are fueling the fires in Palestine, through supplying arms, fuels, or political legitimacy.

No humanitarian response can undo genocide and bring back more than 62,614 lives, no reconstruction can take root on Gaza post-destruction, and no just transition can be built on occupation. The problem begins with a system that feeds off of oppression and dispossession, and the climate crisis will not be solved within the racialised, militarised, fossil empire. Palestinians are not passive recipients of aid. We are not statistics. We are survivors, farmers, builders, mothers, students, and organizers. We are holding the line not only for ourselves—but for the world. There is no justice - ecological, social, or otherwise - without Palestinian liberation. We have always known that justice cannot be delivered by those who profit from our oppression. That development under colonialism is nothing more than the management of suffering. And that liberation is not a metaphor— it is a demand.