When I told my family and friends that I was heading to Israel last summer I heard worried voices telling me to reconsider. I understood the concern. I would soon be on my way to the Gaza Strip, and I couldn’t really know what to expect. Headlines stating that the cease-fire was holding, and progress was being made toward the US-backed “Road Map” to peace comforted me. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had pulled out of the town Beit Hanoun in April, leaving it under the control of the Palestinian Authority, and the incidence of suicide attacks was decreasing. Despite the State Department advising against travel to Israel, it seemed like a relatively safe time to visit the region.

I expected to hear frightening stories of human suffering and I certainly did, but I was taken by surprise when I witnessed the environmental devastation in the Gaza Strip. Jerusalem was one of the most beautiful cities I had ever visited. There were lush farmlands out the taxicab window for every moment of the two and a half hour ride to Erez checkpoint, the entrance into the Gaza Strip. But once inside, the difference was night and day.

Gaza was reduced to a wasteland. The landscape had been transformed by design; environmental destruction was incorporated into military operations. This was a stark incidence of environmental injustice.

Environmental Justice is the right to a safe, healthy, productive and sustainable environment for all. The injustice here is done to the Palestinians as much as the environment. The devastation left in the wake of the Israeli army has left the Palestinians’ water supply in crisis. According to the Palestine Monitor, the average Israeli uses more water in one year that four Palestinians. The World Health Organization shows that Palestinians are only getting between 57 percent to 76 percent of the minimum daily water requirement.

It can be hard to make a case for environmental justice in an area that is under a repressive military occupation. The principles of environmental justice inherently oppose any system that denies people of their right to political, economic, cultural, and environmental self-determination. Under these principles, destructive operations of multi-national corporations and governmental acts of environmental injustice to be considered violations of international law, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and the UN Convention on Genocide. In so doing, Environmental Justice seeks to hold polluters accountable for the damage they cause, including retribution for victims, and calls for education in environmental sustainability.

When I was in Beit Hanoun, I found little hope for accountability or retribution in the face of massive pollution and destruction. I toured the town with Ramadan Naim, the director of the Water Municipality of North Gaza, including Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, and Jabalia. What the American newspapers described as the IDF “pulling out” of town only told half the story. Naim filled me in on the missing details. We spent the day documenting incident after incident where water resources and infrastructure were systematically targeted.

Four of the town’s main bridges had been blown up, which not only disrupted transportation, but also polluted the rivers. Debris and garbage choked off once-flowing streams. When water infrastructure was destroyed by the IDF the sewage system was badly damaged and a major water source was contaminated by human waste. Naim said that the expertise, supplies, and funding needed to remedy this problem aren’t available in the economically depressed Gaza Strip. In the meantime people are getting sick due to contamination and lack of sanitation.

On the outskirts of town we stopped at a dozen wells that had been destroyed in the IDF incursion and remained unrepaired three months later. Naim explained that this was just a handful of the wells that had become the targets of military operations. Over forty wells were lost, leaving several thousand people without the water necessary for their health and livelihood. The sheer amount of destruction was only part of the reason that repair efforts could not be started. The cost of repairing even one well is prohibitive and the parts are not available.

Naim said that even if money and parts were not a problem there were other roadblocks to consider. In many cases the IDF didn’t stop at simply breaking the well mechanism, but had also stuffed the pieces down the well shafts afterward. That makes clean up efforts more difficult, and it contaminates the well with dirty, oily parts that render the entire site unsafe for extracting drinking or irrigation water.

To illustrate yet another reason the wells aren’t being fixed Ramadan Naim took me back to his house. For generations the area had been known for its orchards. Citrus fruit trees of every kind had been abundant and olive trees had flourished. On the roads to his home we passed dozens of barren fields where the trees used to grow. When I asked Naim how many trees had been there, he said, “We can’t even begin to estimate.”

At one point we stood at a demolished well that had been at the center of several farmers’ orchards. Looking around I saw nothing but knee-high, tangled stumps as far as the eye could see. Naim told me farmers can’t afford to replant and trees would not be able to bear fruit for several years, so there is little reason to try to repair the wells.

Israel is worried about Palestinian violence and Naim recounted that there had been more than six IDF incursions into Beit Hanoun in the last two years. The official reasoning behind all these strikes is to eradicate threats to Israeli security. People living in the Gaza Strip, however, speculate that the true motives behind these operations are economic. Naim relayed to me that most people believe water infrastructure and orchards are destroyed because it eliminates competition for Israeli farmers and businessmen, and disrupts the economic wellbeing of Palestinians.

If the people of Beit Hanoun can’t extract water from wells and they don’t use it to irrigate orchards, it leaves more of the precious resource in the ground for Israel. While the veracity of these claims may never be substantiated, the rising tide of violent militancy demonstrates that using military operations to target the Palestinian water supply does nothing to bolster security.

This environmental injustice is no more legitimate a product of conflict than a suicide bombing. In the name of religion, both sides continue to commit acts that are condemnable in the eyes of God.