(WASHINGTON, D.C., 10/21/2025) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today said that the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) should investigate the Israeli occupation’s destruction of one million of Gaza’s 1.1 million olive trees in Gaza an act of ecocide and further evidence of genocidal intent.
The Rom Statute of the International Criminal Court states that countries may not “[i]ntentionally launch an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.”
According to Fayyad Fayyad, the head of the Palestinian Olive Council, Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has rendered the strip’s vital olive sector “almost completely destroyed.” “There is no olive season this year,” Fayyad told Drop Site News. “We estimate that nearly one million of Gaza’s 1.1 million olive trees have been destroyed.” In 2022, Gaza produced about 50,000 tons of olives. This year, Fayyad said, the total will be well under a thousand.
SEE: “We Estimate That Nearly One Million of Gaza’s 1.1 Million Olive Trees Have Been Destroyed”
For decades, illegal Israeli settlers and military occupation forces have also targeted the olive industry in the occupied West Bank.
Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said today: “And just as olives are about the Palestinians’ connection to the land; the escalating assault on the olive harvest season is one of many, many Israeli aggressions designed to sever connection, to annex the land, to dispossess Palestinians, and facilitate the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.”
The BBC reports: “Of the 71 settler attacks documented by the UN’s humanitarian office, OCHA, across the West Bank between 7 and 13 October, half were related to the ongoing harvest season.”
In a statement, Washington, D.C.-based CAIR said:
“It is clear that the Israeli government purposefully targeted – and continues to target – the olive industry in Gaza and the West Bank as part of its genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. The International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice should investigate these acts of ecocide as war crimes. The Israeli apartheid government must be held to account for its ongoing atrocities against not only the Palestinian people, but the land that sustains them.”
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CONTACT: CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, 404-285-9530, e-Mitchell@cair.com; CAIR Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw, 202-742-6448, rmccaw@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Manager Ismail Allison, 202-770-6280, iallison@cair.com