The warquake caused by the friction between the territorial plates of Israel and Palestine are centering around and dragging on in a territory that was once a paradise. The Gaza Strip covers 365 km² on the eastern Mediterranean coast, the same area as Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer on the western Mediterranean coast.
© United Nations
But today, the Gaza Strip is a living hell. Its average population density is one of the highest in the world. From this perspective, Gaza resembles Hong Kong and the Manhattan district of New York. At the start of the war, Gaza had a population of around 2,250,000, including 900,000 children under the age of 15. Between October 2023 and September 2024 alone, 17,000 children are believed to have died under the rubble or as a result of their injuries or amputations. The survivors will forever bear the scars of this trauma in their flesh and in their minds, and many will grow up without a father or mother.
In the first year of the invasion by the Israel Defense Forces, life expectancy in Gaza fell by 38 years for men and 30 years for women. Among the dead, 46% were men aged 15 to 64 and 54% were women, elderly people and children. These statistics are similar to that seen after crowd movements, forest fires, floods and earthquakes.
The rubble from the demolition of buildings and roads in Gaza was estimated at 23 million tonnes, or 107 kg/m2, at the beginning of January 2024. It was estimated at 54 million tonnes, or 385 kg/m2, in April 2025. This rubble is war remains in bulk. It contains asbestos, hydrocarbons, cadmium and other metal pollutants, WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment), spoiled medicines and pesticides, burnt plastics, hospital waste, anatomical waste, a tragic, infectious and toxic cocktail that will continue to pollute the air, the waters of the Wadi Gaza wetland, irrigation and drinking water, coastal waters and the resources of Gaza’s 3,700 fishermen for a long time to come, a complex and borderless pollution whose plume is already spreading towards Lebanon and Israel. The cataclysm in Gaza is a regional cataclysm.
Between Saturday, October 7, 2023, and January 2024, 25,000 tonnes of explosives were dropped on Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces, the TNT equivalent of two Hiroshima bombs. We are now surely at around ten. At least 10% of the shells and bombs did not explode on impact and are deep buried into the rubble, the sand and the gravel of Gaza’s geological basement. This hidden reservoir of ammonium nitrate, aluminium powder and carcinogenic chlorinated compounds poses a very long-term threat to the Palestinian and neighbouring country populations. For example, a century after the outbreak of the First World War, drinking water in northern France is contaminated by ammonium perchlorate used by armies as a propellant and explosive in bombs and artillery ammunition.
The ceasefire, if it ever comes, in the Gaza Strip will not be a ceasepollution. It will have the immense advantage of restoring hope, food and drink to the survivors and resilient people of Gaza, but it will also require an inventory and assessment of all the environmental, health and post-traumatic threats that will continue to flow from the body of this senseless war for a long time to come.
Sources:
The title of this press release is inspired by Hiroshima, mon amour, a French-Japanese film directed by Alain Resnais, 1959. Screenplay by Marguerite Duras.
Guillot, Michel. “In our researchers’ own words”, French Institute for Demographic Studies, February 2025
Guillot, Michel et al. “Life expectancy losses in the Gaza Strip during the period October, 2023, to September, 2024.” The Lancet, Volume 405, Issue 10477, 478 – 485, February 8, 2025
Jamaluddine, Zeina et al. “Traumatic injury mortality in the Gaza Strip from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024: a capture–recapture analysis.” The Lancet, Volume 405, Issue 10477, 469 – 477, February 8, 2025
Robin des Bois. Atlas de la France toxique, Arthaud Editions, 2016
UNEP (United Nations Environment Program). “Environmental Impact of the Conflict in Gaza: Preliminary Assessment of Environmental Impacts”, 2024
UNEP. “Gaza Strip: Preliminary Debris Quantification – Damage Assessment Analysis: 4th April 2025″, May 1, 2025
United Nations Mine Action Service. “Explosive Ordnance threat factsheet January 2025”, January 2025
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