Permaculture & Palestine:
A Statement from the Movement
(30 August 2025)

I. Who We Are & Why We Speak   

We are farmers and growers, builders and carers, students and educators, parents and children united by our care for the Earth and her people. All over the world our dearest wish is to live simple lives, tending our lands and communities, and healing the damage done.

However, we are called to rise in response to the brutal destruction of lives, land, and cultures in Palestine. We join the growing call to end genocide, apartheid, colonial occupation, ecocide, and enforced starvation. We stand in solidarity with those resisting oppression—and invite permaculture practitioners everywhere to act in alignment with our ethics. 

The Israeli genocide of Palestinians is not happening in a vacuum. The revival of rightwing ideologies, combined with the rise of sophisticated economic, electronic, cybernetic and media tools of control, dominion and mass distraction, uphold colonial structures and mindsets that have never truly disappeared. Meanwhile, capitalism facilitates the drive towards endless growth and destruction on a finite planet. What is happening in Gaza is part of the repression, marginalisation and obliteration of indigenous peoples around the world.

As a permaculture community we cannot be silent in the face of the genocide in Palestine. The rising of political forces, especially within Western countries, intent on disintegrating the most basic human rights gained through the struggle of the generations who came before us, is posing a global threat to the very survival of life on our planet. It is our moral duty to stand up and confront the destruction:

• More than 80 percent of Gaza’s total cropland area has been damaged (UN - FAO).
• At least 70% of Gaza buildings destroyed (UN, Aug 2025).
• More than 20,000 children for acute malnutrition since April 2025. Catastrophic levels of food insecurity are projected for entire population by September (UN, July 2025).
• Last week the Israeli military uprooted 10,000 olive trees in al-Mughayyir village (West Bank). Since 1967, the Israeli government has uprooted over 800,000 olive trees, and bulldozed hundreds of miles of agricultural land in Palestine (Jewish Voice for Peace).

We embrace complexity and can differentiate between Judaism and Zionism, and between Islam and Islamic extremism. We reject all violent religious extremism.

We condemn anti-Semitism and the centuries of pogroms and violence leading to the Nazi genocide. We affirm our commitment to “Never Again”…and this means never again for anyone. We also recognise that charges of anti-Semitism are often weaponised to silence opposition to Israeli policy, and that this distracts from the dangerous rise of real anti-Semitism linked to the extreme right around the world.

We condemn the Zionist campaign of violence and ethnic cleansing used to create the state of Israel, both before, during and after the Nakba (“the Catastrophe”, 1948), which brutally expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. The current genocide in Gaza is a continuation of the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. 

We support the 2024 International Permaculture Convergence petition “Defending Life Against Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Aggression,” and encourage all to read and sign it too.

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II. The Ethics We Are Called to Live

We, as permaculturists, speak from a shared ethical foundation: Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share. These are not metaphors. They are imperatives.

Earth Care

In Palestine, land is not only being taken—it is being systematically destroyed. War leaves behind a toxic legacy that devastates ecosystems, contaminates water sources, and harms communities for generations after. Explosives, heavy metals, white phosphorus, and other chemicals can linger in the soil and water, posing long-term threats to health and food security. The destruction of olive groves, farms, forests, seed banks (such as the UAWC Seed Bank in Hebron), and water systems is part of a war on life. From Gaza to the West Bank, this destruction targets not only the environment and food systems, but the people who steward them and rely upon them.

To care for the Earth here means to stand with Palestinian farmers, seed savers, and land protectors as they work to feed their communities and steward their lands. It means supporting place-based and community accessible bioremediation and ecological restoration projects to heal the destruction and toxic contamination left behind by war. It means calling out greenwashing by institutions complicit in occupation, and by Israeli permaculturalists developing farms and organising courses and retreats in the West Bank. 

People Care

This principle begins with listening—and continues with justice.

Palestinians are being dehumanized, displaced, imprisoned, and killed.      

Schools, hospitals and market places are being systematically attacked to demolish the infrastructure of human existence.

These are not isolated acts of war. They are patterns of state violence and genocide, enabled by global silence.

People Care demands that we centre Palestinian voices, resist erasure, and challenge the normalisation of settler colonialism. We must also recognise how this violence echoes in other colonized, racialized, and dispossessed communities.

Fair Share

Fair Share is not possible under apartheid. It calls for equity, not occupation.

Palestinian access to water, movement, land, food, and housing is violently restricted. Meanwhile, parts of the global permaculture community operate within or adjacent to systems of oppression and occupied land.

To share fairly, we must ask:

• Who benefits from silence?
• Who profits from stolen land?
• What are we willing to risk in order to live our ethics?

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III. What We Commit To

We call on permaculturists – individually and collectively – to:

Speak clearly against genocide, apartheid, and ecocide.

Amplify Palestinian knowledge and voices in courses, gatherings, and projects.

Join or form working groups to strategize long-term solidarity.

Support Palestinian-led initiatives, cooperatives, Baladi farming (traditional, small-scale agriculture focused on local, heirloom crop varieties and sustainable practices), food sovereignty, and ecological restoration.

Defend the right of Palestinians to lead their own post-war recovery and reconstruction in Gaza. Stand against international post-war plans that seek to displace Palestinians and result in more land theft, occupation, and violence.

Engage with the BDS campaign (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) and support businesses and companies that do not profit from the Economy of Genocide.

Protest, take to the streets, and disrupt business as usual. 

Develop online and in-person training for Palestinians, both in their territory and for those displaced in the diaspora.

Organise “Homeplaces" and support networks where Palestinians can live safely until they are able to return home.

Refuse complicity—by examining land use, institutional funding, and silence.

Recognise the challenge given to our movement by indigenous groups expressed in their ‘Whitewashed hope’ statement.

Include discussion on colonisation and genocide in Palestine in our training courses and PDCs

Sign and circulate this statement, which has grown from shared conversations among permaculture practitioners across diverse lands and experiences.

Join the Permaculture & Palestine Telegram group by clicking HERE, the email list by clicking HERE or alternatively send an email to: permaculture-palestine-subscribe@lists.riseup.net to subscribe (don't forget to check your inbox, for a confirmation email).

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IV. By Signing This Statement...

...I commit to aligning my permaculture practice with action.

...I commit to at least one step among those named above—from sharing this message to building ongoing collaboration.

...I choose to live the ethics of permaculture—not as metaphor, but as commitment.

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*Image credit: Frank M. Rafik, in Ecologist Magazine https://theecologist.org/2015/nov/07/destruction-palestinian-olive-trees-monstrous-crime