Yasmeen El Hasan is responsible for international advocacy for the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), a Palestinian organization that is part of the international movement La Via Campesina and which since 1986 has defended Palestinian food sovereignty by working directly with communities in Gaza. and in the West Bank. “To achieve food sovereignty, self-determination is necessary. Our struggle for food sovereignty is inextricably linked to our struggle for national sovereignty,” says the woman in an interview with elDiario.es in Madrid.
Hasan came to Spain invited and accompanied by the NGO Mundubat, in coordination with other social actors, and visited the Basque Country, Madrid and Catalonia. During his stay in the capital, he attended the Congress of Deputies and the Casa Arabe, and in the middle of his meetings he spoke to this newspaper from Matadero Madrid.
The activist, whose neck hangs a gold pendant representing historic Palestine, openly uses the term “genocide” and at all times refers to Israel as “the occupation.” He explains that Israel’s settler model is based on replacing the local population with settlers and that land is therefore a fundamental element of this model. “Land is the basis of food systems, so if settlers want to expel the population, they attack the food system, and this is what Israel has been doing since the beginning of its Zionist project”, in 1948, with the founding of the food system. Jewish state that led to the expulsion of some 700,000 Palestinians from their lands.
He denounces that “the Israeli occupation has deliberately attacked the infrastructure that communities need to survive” in Gaza. And he asks, “If people can’t support themselves on their land, how can you survive?” » This is why your organization focuses on food sovereignty. “If we have sovereignty over our lands and our resources, we will have food security,” says the young woman, who expresses both indignation and sadness through her words and her gaze.
17 years of siege and one of genocide
Food security was already in question in Gaza well before the start of the Israeli offensive – during which some 44,000 Palestinians died and 86% of the Gaza Strip was destroyed, according to data from local authorities. El Hasan points out that the start of the genocide in Gaza is taken as a temporal reference, but that the situation was already “bad” before October 7 last year. “Gaza had been under siege for over 17 years which had completely devastated all sectors of the Strip, not just agriculture and food. »
“The Israeli occupation has created a system in the Gaza Strip in which people are completely dependent on it for water, electricity and everything else. But the Palestinians are very creative and knew how to make do with what was available during the siege,” he says with a smile. His face softens when he refers to his people and the resilience they demonstrate.
This economic land, sea and air blockade was imposed on Gaza in 2007 after Hamas took power in the coastal enclave and expelled the Palestinian National Authority, having won parliamentary elections the previous year.
Despite enormous difficulties, Gaza was virtually self-sufficient in agricultural production before the current war. Farmers circumvented the blockade as best they could, which included “severe restrictions on the importation of raw materials, seeds and fertilizers,” explains the UAWC representative. Many products used for agriculture are on the list of so-called dual-use materials that Israel does not allow into Gaza because it fears they could be used for military purposes by Hamas. “There were many things needed by farmers and herders that were not allowed to access them, which had a serious impact on their ability to develop the food system in Gaza. »
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, the agricultural sector went from more than 400,000 tonnes of vegetables before October 7, 2023 to less than 50,000 tonnes a year later.
The brutal Israeli offensive, which has lasted for more than 400 days, has ended up strangling an already weak economy: economic activity is paralyzed and only informal activity exists, according to the World Bank, which estimates that inflation in Gaza in 2024 reached 250% (due to the great shortage of goods, most of which come from humanitarian aid and are resold on the black market).
“Before the genocide, Gaza had – and will continue to have in the future – an important fishing sector, economically, socially and culturally. There were over 4,000 fishermen in the Gaza Strip and the UAWC worked closely with them. But the Israeli occupation established restricted access zones, restricting access to 85% of Gaza’s territorial waters and fishermen could only access a few nautical miles for a few hours a day.
These restricted areas also included approximately 35% of agricultural land, which was mainly located next to the “apartheid wall” separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, which had established a “security zone” along its border, in which chemicals were used that “Not only did they kill plants and crops, but they also poisoned the soil,” explains El Hasan. Furthermore, “he would shoot anyone who approached the wall and tried to access his land.”
Today, this containment zone is even larger, as the Israeli army expanded it during its military operations in the Gaza Strip and destroyed everything in it. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed last week that the army was building infrastructure in Gaza to remain in the territory for the long term. On a map published by the newspaper, the “security zone” appears along the entire perimeter of the Gaza Strip, including the border it shares with Egypt (to the south).
Killing the food system
El Hasan is convinced that Israel’s military strategy in Gaza aims to eliminate the strip’s residents’ opportunities to produce their own food. For example, 95% of livestock died, he emphasizes. His organization has helped Gazan breeders who still have animals with veterinary kits to treat them and more than 600 tonnes of barley to feed them. More than 7,000 sheep farmers benefited in October 2024, according to UAWC data.
The organization’s international advocacy manager says this pattern has been repeated over the past few years, during which Israel has launched several offensives against Gaza, although the current offensive is by far the longest, most destructive and the deadliest. “Time and again, it destroyed critical infrastructure in Gaza and attacked it from the first moment of the genocide,” in October 2023. A few days after the start of its collective punishment against the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli government promised that the Gazans would not turn on any electrical switches, turn on any water pipes, and no fuel trucks would enter the Palestinian enclave.
“When a population cannot meet their needs on their own land, help arrives [internacional]. But Israel has blocked all humanitarian aid! », denounces the activist. “Israel makes food unavailable in Gaza and the little amount that arrives is concentrated in certain areas, and it is very expensive, people cannot afford to buy this food,” he explains, adding that Israeli forces attack Palestinians who turn to humanitarian aid. distribution points, in what are already being called “flour massacres”.
“Israel has created a situation where Palestinians cannot produce their food, there is no food available and they cannot access what little is available. What do they have left? Hunger. The Israeli occupation has created a famine in the Gaza Strip,” he concludes. “Dozens of children have been killed by malnutrition and many more will be killed. Tens of thousands of people suffer from severe malnutrition and yet international organizations have been debating for months whether this can be qualified as famine! », he adds, incredulously.
To put an end to this situation, El Hasan affirms that there must be an immediate ceasefire and unrestricted access to humanitarian aid, but above all that we must put an end to the siege of Gaza and the occupation of the enclave. “Every time Israel hits Gaza, Gaza rebuilds. When the genocide ends – and it will end one day – Gaza will be rebuilt,” she asserts with conviction, but reiterates that this requires “the dismantling of the colonial system that has oppressed Palestinians” for decades, both in Gaza and ‘in the West. Bank.
