Since Israel began its genocide of Gaza in October 2023, the accelerated erosion of traditional food systems has made Palestinians increasingly vulnerable to Israel’s mechanisms of violence; the starvation campaign Israel has waged on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for the past sixteen months demonstrates this. But these systems of dispossession have been at play for much longer. For the past few decades, for instance, Israel has regularly sprayed herbicides on the eastern farmlands of the Strip to undermine agrarian life. In Masafer Yatta and across the West Bank, Israel’s colonial legislations have disrupted the relationships with, and strong sense of responsibility for, the land, animals and plants that Palestinian communities have maintained for centuries. Food plays a major part in how this is done.
… Since October 2023, Palestinian workers in Masafer Yatta have been unemployed, as Israeli authorities prevent them, and tens of thousands of others, from accessing their workplaces. Several families in Masafer Yatta currently have no source of livelihood, which puts them at the brink of undernourishment. Reema, a semi-nomadic pastoralist from Khirbet Tuba, told me, ‘Every year, I would generate an income of 5000 ILS (approximately £1,131) from selling my dairy products … People in Yatta are poorer now and cannot afford to buy the same amount of ghee and Keshk they used to.’ Under the cover of the fifteen-month-long Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, Israeli settlers have intensified the violence they inflict on Palestinian shepherds and families in the West Bank. Reema recounted how settlers broke into her home and stole food, and as they closed the road connecting Khirbet Tuba to nearby villages and towns, she and her family were unable to venture out to buy food. ‘We almost starved, until a group of international solidarity activists managed to bring us something to eat,’ she said.
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