The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) has received urgent reports from our members and partners in Palestine about the widespread destruction of land, food systems, and community resilience under occupation. As a network committed to regeneration, peace, and dignity for all, to remain silent would betray the values we exist to uphold, especially when the very foundations of community life — seeds, soil, water, and safety — are under sustained attack.
In Farkha Ecovillage, community members are facing daily assaults: land confiscation, seizure of water sources, destruction of its seed bank, and the burning of the largest plant nursery and vegetable market in the West Bank. These are not isolated incidents — they are deliberate attacks on food sovereignty, and on decades of work to cultivate regeneration, sustainability, and peace. Support Farkha.
Hakoritna farm, a long-time GEN partner in Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) and regenerative agriculture, has also suffered devastating losses. Help them rebuild their farm in the West Bank. These ecovillages represent more than just farms or communities — they are living examples of resilience, ecological wisdom, and the right to thrive even in the harshest conditions.
This destruction is not happening in isolation. On 16 September 2025, the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry found that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, fulfilling four of the five acts defined under the Genocide Convention (full report). This ruling affirms what communities on the ground have long known: that the attacks on life, land, and livelihood are not incidental, but systemic and targeted. Ecological destruction is being used as a weapon of war.
GEN was founded to connect communities stewarding life and land, and we continue to do so in times of crisis. When ecovillages and community-led land projects are destroyed through violence, it is not only local populations who suffer — but also the global movement for regeneration.
We affirm that the struggle for ecological justice and community resilience in Palestine is inseparable from the struggle for sustainable futures everywhere.
We therefore call on our network to:
- Listen to Palestinian voices, and to other voices of communities and people suffering from armed conflict and systemic violence.
- Support grassroots initiatives that are safeguarding seeds, water, land, and food systems under extreme threat.
- Speak out against genocide and the use of starvation, displacement, and ecological destruction as weapons of war.
GEN reasserts that peace is rooted in justice, and justice requires that all people and communities everywhere can live, grow food, and regenerate land free from violence and fear.
We will continue to connect, support, and strengthen communities that seek to live these values, even amidst destruction. As long as war and systemic violence persist, the world will remain unable to achieve the promise of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
We therefore strongly support the call for an immediate ceasefire and a comprehensive peace plan.
From Palestine to every place where communities and people are under threat, GEN stands as part of a global movement for life, peace, safety, resilience, and systems regeneration.
Because without peace and security, nothing else is possible.
GEN Staff
The post, dated October 6th, failed to even mention that October 7th marks 2 years since the Palestinian genocide of Jews in Israel in 2023, setting off a two year war which we hope will end in the coming days. Most of the October 7th victims were living on kibbutzim, the largest communal movement in the world. Hundreds of young people were murdered at a weekend-long music festival. Many of those murdered were peace activists who worked tirelessly for peace with their neighbors in Gaza. The Palestinian attackers took 251 hostages back across the border into Gaza. Those who survived and still there are kept chained, starved and brutally abused. The Palestinian attack was joined by attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi army in Yemen, and the Iranian army. Thousands of Israelis were forced from their homes. Bombs and rockets landed everywhere in Israel. I have collected many exploded rocket pieces, found while trying to continue farming my olives trees.
In order to return the hostages, destroy Hamas military capabilities as well as those in Lebanon and Iran, Israel counter-attacked. The Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad army and their huge military arsenal were well hidden in a massive underground network, purposely placed within and under civilian houses and neighborhoods, hospitals and mosques. The inevitable casualties would show the world how evil the Jews were, and bring closer a “final solution to the Jewish problem” .
I call on GEN to immediately voice support for the American plan now approved with support from many countries around the world, including Israel, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia, and Pakistan.