Scientist and activist Mazin Qumsiyeh reflects on Palestinian ''ecocide" at the UAB

Invited by researchers from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB), Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, director of the Palestine Museum of Natural Sciences and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, gave a conference entitled "Global ecocide and what to do about it: a case study from Palestine" on Friday 17 October, in the Board Room of the Rectorat building.

Professor Qumsiyeh, a candidate for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, wearing a white rose as a "symbol of peaceful university activism that emerged from the movement against Nazism at the University of Munich", presented Palestine as a patient whose "history, symptoms, correct diagnosis, therapy and prognosis must be known".

Palestine is a “bottleneck between Africa and Asia” through which humans “migrated from the African continent to the rest of the world”, therefore “we can consider that all our ancestors are Palestinians”, explained Qumsiyeh. “Five hundred million birds migrate annually between the European, African and Asian continents passing through a land very rich in biodiversity: 540 species of birds, 120 of mammals and 5,400 species of plants”. This biological wealth “led to the origin of the first civilizations in the entire Fertile Crescent region, 12,000 years ago”. Qumsiyeh highlighted “the harmony in which its inhabitants have lived for thousands of years, a mixture of populations, origins, languages, philosophies and ideas, as well as the love of the Palestinians for human and biological diversity”. A diversity that “colonisers want to destroy”, he said.

For the Palestinian professor, the current problem is that “the Zionists want to transform a plural state into a Jewish state, which implies that those who are not Jews must leave”. And taking up the medical analogy, for Qumsiyeh the diagnosis is clear, Palestine suffers from displacement settler colonialism. “It is important to have a good diagnosis, to distinguish it, for example, from a religious conflict, a military occupation, or anything else that can be confusing in the path to finding a therapy”, continued the professor. “We are suffering from a genocide, with more than 500,000 indigenous Palestinians killed since 1948, more than a million seriously injured, more than 900,000 detained or imprisoned by the State of Israel, and a refugee population of more than 8.5 million displaced people”.

Universities have also been destroyed. As Qumsiyeh recalled, “Israel has destroyed all universities and higher education institutions in the Gaza Strip,” and is responsible for a “destruction of truth, a ‘vericide’, with the murder of more than 240 journalists in the Strip in the past two years, more than those killed in the past hundred years in all wars, including the two world wars.”

The Palestinian professor considers another symptom of “ecocide” the global destruction of the environment by the State of Israel: millions of trees uprooted, in some areas replaced by pines, which are fire-prone and threaten biodiversity, a forest cover practically eliminated in most of the region, the serious desertification of the Jordan River, the destruction of greenhouses, etc.”. The environmental destruction in Palestine has an impact on a global scale, since “Israel has produced more greenhouse gases in the past two years of war with the bombings alone, than in all the activity of a country like Spain throughout this entire time”. Mazin Qumsiyeh argues that “it is important to talk about ecocide in a situation of genocide like the current one because everything is connected. We estimate that 10% of the population of Gaza has been murdered, much more than the 65,000 deaths in hospital records, but even if the war ended today, many more people will die in the next ten years due to malnutrition and carcinogenic substances from the bombs. More than 10% of the population will die because of this ecocide”.

Qumsiyeh also presented the paths of action to promote peace, environmental justice and sustainability that he develops at the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, a leading centre in the region for its integrative approach to conservation, education and social justice. The institute's activity encompasses research, education and community services "with a very small staff and the collaboration of more than six hundred volunteers from around the world who have participated in it in the past 10 years."

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh has a renowned academic and research treajectory at universities in the United States such as Tennessee, Duke and Yale. He is the author of more than 250 scientific articles, 30 book chapters and several reference works, including Sharing the Land of Canaan and Popular Resistance in Palestine. His research ranges from the environmental impact of colonisation to climate justice, biodiversity conservation, and human rights. He has served on the board of eleven human rights organisations and has promoted numerous community empowerment projects that have benefited thousands of people. His work has received recognition with awards such as the Paul K. Feyerabend Award, the TAKREEM Award, and the Peace Seeker of the Year Award.