Thousands of dunums of pasture, winter crops and orchards have been damaged in the countryside of Quneitra, in south-western Syria, by pesticide spraying carried out by Israeli forces over farmland adjoining the ceasefire line, the province’s agriculture directorate said. The effects of the spraying are still unfolding.
The spraying was not confined to particular plots. It extended across wide areas, drawing in landowners and livestock herders across the belt of farmland that runs alongside the line.
Why the unit matters
A dunum is a thousand square metres, one tenth of a hectare. Damage measured in thousands of dunums therefore covers hundreds of hectares of land that was under cultivation or in use for grazing.
The three categories of loss are not interchangeable. Pasture is the free fodder that herds live on, and its loss falls immediately on livestock owners. Winter crops represent a single agricultural season. Orchards are the slowest to recover: their trees take years to replace, so damage there is counted in seasons still to come rather than in the one just lost.
The line the fields sit on
The ceasefire line in Quneitra was established by the 1974 disengagement agreement that followed the October 1973 war. It separates territory under Syrian administration from the Golan Heights, which Israel occupies. Farming and herding are the main activities in the countryside on either side of it, which is why damage to vegetation there is an economic event as much as an agricultural one.
No final estimate of the value of the losses has been set out in the initial information, nor a count of how many individual holdings were affected. Figures of that kind normally follow a field survey by agricultural authorities once the effects of spraying have run their course and the extent of the damage to vegetation is visible.
This report was produced by the HuMedia newsroom.
