APN | Lebanon-Zoom

21 June 2024

Mariam Al Jaajaa, APN General Manager, was invited as a speaker at the "Justice for Gaza" conference organized by the American University of Beirut and the "Gaza Health Initiative". The conference saw the participation of numerous speakers and attendees from various countries around the world.

In her presentation, "That Harvest of Hope: Famine in Gaza and Agricultural Resistance", Al Jaajaa emphasized the importance of assessing and documenting damage across all sectors in a technical and precise manner. However, she also called for a discussion on the various forms of resistance and effective ways to support them. She outlined the history of food militarization in Palestine and the systematic plans implemented by the occupation to starve the people of Gaza before October 2023 by imposing a blockade and targeting the agricultural sector through bombing and bulldozing in previous rounds of war. She stated that the current plan is to use food as a weapon for genocide.

In light of this reality, Al Jaajaa spoke about the exceptional project launched by APN, "Revive Gaza’s Farmland," as a means of resistance and resilience against famine, relying on the cultivation of fast-growing and high-nutritional-value crops on the lands of 500 farmers.

She concluded her speech by emphasizing the priority of pressing to stop the genocide, blockade, and Israeli settler colonialism by all necessary means, banning weapons and energy trade to and from the occupation, halting normalization agreements, and supporting agriculture and food sovereignty at all times.

Al Jaajaa also recommended using precise and accurate terminology such as settler colonialism and occupation instead of conflict, genocide instead of war, and famine instead of food insecurity. She stressed the importance of integrating ecocide into the legal framework and holding accountable all countries that abetted this genocide with money and political cover.