Statement from a comrade from the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)
At the Food Autonomy Festival this year, we hosted a space focused on International Solidarity, during which a comrade read a statement written by his brother, a member of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), the Palestinian Via Campesina, regarding the current situation in Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza. Titled “Farming Under Siege: Food, Land, and Resistance in Palestine”, this speech is a reflection on the ways in which food, farming and agriculture are used as a weapon of control, coercion and war.
Please feel free to share the following, the full speech, and the donation link below far and wide!
“We often speak of war and occupation in terms of bombs, borders, and bloodshed. But there is another, slower war — one fought in fields and kitchens, through water pipes and checkpoints, through hunger and control: food and land.”
It is also a strong statement of solidarity, a recognition of the importance of farming as resistance in Palestine, and a call to action.
“Friends, when we talk about justice for Palestine, we must talk about land, water, and food. We must talk about the farmers. About the fishermen. About the women baking bread in kitchens surrounded by rubble. Because justice is not just a ceasefire. It is the right to live — and grow.
Let us stand with Palestinian farmers — not as victims, but as freedom fighters rooted in the soil.
Let us demand an end to military occupation and to starvation as policy.
Let us fight for a world where the right to food is never held hostage by apartheid or genocide.
Because food is not a weapon. Food is a right. And Palestine has the right to live. Free Palestine.”
We wanted to share this speech with those who could not attend this session at the FAF, you can read it in full below. Donation to UAWC is also greatly appreciated.
Full statement
Good afternoon,
Thank you all for gathering today — in solidarity, in resistance, and in the spirit of justice. I want to talk about something basic — something we all depend on — yet something that has become a site of deep violence in occupied Palestine: food and farming.
We often speak of war and occupation in terms of bombs, borders, and bloodshed. But there is another, slower war — one fought in fields and kitchens, through water pipes and checkpoints, through hunger and control: food and land.
Let’s begin with Gaza. Since 2007, Gaza has been under an Israeli-imposed blockade. Over 2.3 million people live in an area one and half times the size of Amsterdam. Over 70% of Gaza’s population are refugees. In the past few months — since the escalation of Israel’s bombardment in late 2023 — the situation has turned catastrophic.
The World Food Programme declared in March 2024 that famine is imminent. Now, in June 2025, After two and a half months of complete aid blockade this has risen to 100% of the Gaza population being at the brink of starvation. As we speak , over 50 children had died of hunger — and those are only the documented cases. The destruction is systemic: Israel has bombed agricultural land, grain mills, bakeries, irrigation infrastructure, and even aid convoys and distribution centres. Over 90% of farmland in Gaza has been rendered inaccessible or unusable due to bombardment and military activity.
In the West Bank, the situation is different but deeply related. There, Palestinians face severe restrictions on land use and water access. Settler violence has surged to historic levels. According to the UN, over 1,200 Palestinians in the West Bank have been forcibly displaced by settler attacks and demolitions since October 2023 alone. Villages have been erased and illegal outposts have been established.
To be a farmer in Palestine is to work under siege — not metaphorically, but literally. Imagine planting olive trees knowing they may be burned overnight. Imagine tending to your land with the knowledge that an illegal settler might attack you — and the soldier next to him will protect him, not you.
In Gaza, farmers are shot at for approaching the so-called “buffer zone,” and now that includes all the No-Go zones which is over 70% of Gaza lands. Their farms, tools, belongings have been fully destroyed. In the West Bank, farmers are often denied permits to access their own land or to drill wells. The Israeli state, in coordination with settler militias, uses legal, military, and physical violence to remove Palestinians from their ancestral lands.
In both territories, being a farmer today is an act of daily defiance — it is risky, precarious, and deeply political.
Palestinian farmers face a multi-layered system of dispossession and control. Some of the most urgent problems include:
- Land theft and displacement: Over 850,000 olive trees — many of them centuries old — have been destroyed by Israel since 1967.
- Water apartheid: 85% of West Bank water is controlled by Israel. Palestinians are limited to 70 liters per person per day, while Israeli settlers — often living nearby —
consume over 300 liters per day. - Movement restrictions: Checkpoints, military zones, and settler roads make it nearly impossible for many farmers to reach their land during key planting and harvest
seasons. - Economic strangulation: Israel controls all exports and imports. Farmers can’t send goods to market, and face unpredictable border closures and taxes.
This is not a random list of difficulties. These are deliberate policies — designed to uproot Palestinian agricultural life and make self-sufficiency impossible.
Occupation affects every stage of farming:
- It affects Planning: Palestinians can’t build new greenhouses or barns without Israeli permits — and over 98% of those permits are denied.
- It affects Production: Farmers risk settler attacks or arrest for simply accessing their fields.
- It affects Distribution: Israeli control of border crossings means produce rots waiting for export approval — especially in Gaza before the genocide, where up to 50% of
strawberries and tomatoes were lost due to delays. - It affects Profit: Israeli subsidies and settler farm expansions crowd Palestinian farmers out of the market. Palestinian agriculture shrinks — Israeli agribusiness
expands.
Here is something chilling: Israel uses the occupation as a live testing ground for military and surveillance technologies. The drones that fly over Gaza’s farmlands? They’re built and tested by Israeli arms companies — then marketed globally as “combat-proven.”
Agricultural areas become testing zones for automated weapon systems, aerial surveillance, and remote-control bulldozers. In fact, Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s largest weapons firms, has openly stated that Gaza is where they refine their tools.
This is what researchers call “agro-imperialism”: where war, agriculture, and profit are fused. Where destruction of Palestinian farming becomes part of a business model.
Let’s be clear: Denying a people access to land, water, and food is not just a violation of rights — it is a weapon. And in the case of Palestine, it meets the UN’s own definition of genocide: “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group.”
The Israeli government has openly stated that “no humanitarian aid” should enter Gaza, and continues to block food trucks even as people starve. The strategy is not only military — it is about making life unlivable. This is genocide through starvation, deprivation, and ecological destruction.
And yet — despite all of this — Palestinians continue to resist.
In the West Bank, farmers have formed cooperatives to share resources and reclaim land. Organizations like ours, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees support thousands of smallholder farmers, helping them plant crops and resist evictions. In Gaza, we support communities replant what’s been destroyed, raise livestock on rooftops, and preserve heirloom seeds to protect biodiversity.
Women, especially, play a central role — as farmers, organizers, and keepers of agricultural knowledge. They maintain seed banks, revive traditional techniques, and link food sovereignty to broader liberation struggles. They are instrumental in food processing, even during genocide.
Food is life. And in Palestine, food is also resistance.
Planting an olive tree is a political act. Baking bread becomes a cultural revival. Saving seeds is a form of memory and future-making. Every harvest that survives the occupation is a rejection of erasure.
Food gives people roots — literally and figuratively. That is why the occupation targets it. And that is why Palestinians defend it with such courage.
Because to grow food is to say: We are still here. You have not won. You will not erase us.
Friends, when we talk about justice for Palestine, we must talk about land, water, and food. We must talk about the farmers. About the fishermen. About the women baking bread in kitchens surrounded by rubble. Because justice is not just a ceasefire. It is the right to live — and grow.
Let us stand with Palestinian farmers — not as victims, but as freedom fighters rooted in the soil.
Let us demand an end to military occupation and to starvation as policy.
Let us fight for a world where the right to food is never held hostage by apartheid or genocide.
Because food is not a weapon. Food is a right. And Palestine has the right to live. Free Palestine
