"Al-Zannana"
The atrocities and crimes committed in wars are usually measured by the volume of rubble and the number of visible victims. But in the Gaza Strip, amid the genocidal war waged by the Israeli occupation forces, many hidden and terrifying dimensions of violation stand out, classified as part of the genocide. Among them is "ecocide" and a war of noise pollution, embodied in the intense and continuous flight of unmanned military aircraft of various types, which Palestinians locally call "al-zannana" (the buzzer).
This unceasing mechanical drone is not a passing noise in the background. It is a tool of psychological torture and deliberate collective punishment, turning Gaza's sky into a suffocating blanket of terror and tension and destroying the auditory and psychological environment of more than two million people.
The danger of the "zannana" lies not only in the missiles it carries but also in the sound frequencies its engines emit. According to World Health Organization (WHO) standards, permissible environmental noise that causes no health harm should not exceed 45 to 55 decibels by day and 40 decibels at night to ensure healthy, quiet sleep.
According to military aviation data, Israeli reconnaissance aircraft (such as the Hermes 450 and Hermes 900) typically record noise levels of 70 to 85 decibels during intensive low-altitude flight, and these may exceed 90 to 100 decibels during escalation and low attack flights, which completely overturns the health standards set by the WHO.
The low, intensive flight of drone swarms over the Strip therefore exceeds permissible levels by a wide margin, with noise continuing around the clock without interruption, creating a state of extreme noise pollution.
Depleted bodies
Continuous, prolonged exposure to this auditory pollution has devastating physiological consequences documented in medical reports, and in Gaza it appears on several levels:
Chronic sleep deprivation
Cardiovascular strain
Cognitive impairment
"Suspended death" syndrome
Despite the harshness of this sickening reality, an exceptional and complex psychological phenomenon emerges: the ability of Palestinians en masse to adapt to this deadly noise pollution in a way that seems strange, perhaps incomprehensible, to an outside observer.
In psychological and neurological terms, this behaviour is attributed to unconscious defence mechanisms the human mind adopts to ensure survival. When a person is under constant pressure with no escape, the brain resorts to what is known as sensory habituation: the central nervous system reduces its emotional response to the repeated sound stimulus (the zannana) to prevent a total nervous breakdown.
This exceptional adaptation leads the mind to practise a trick of normalising the abnormal, integrating the sound of aircraft into the natural background sounds of daily life, just like the sound of wind or sea waves. Although this adaptation looks like a triumph of the Palestinian will to survive, psychology warns of its heavy cost. It is a superficial, outward adaptation: while the conscious mind ignores the sound in order to carry on with the details of life, the subconscious and the biological body remain in a state of continuous depletion and inner burnout.
Torture by noise and ecocide
Human rights reports indicate that this noise pollution cannot be separated from the broader context of ecocide. Such levels of constant noise, classified as an environmental nuisance, amount to systematic and grave violations of the right to a healthy and safe environment and the right to mental and physical health, rights guaranteed by international human rights instruments.
The occupation's deliberate maintenance of this level of noise, saturating Palestinian airspace with this auditory pollution, falls within policies of collective punishment and psychological torture prohibited under the Convention against Torture and under international humanitarian law, in particular the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in time of war.