From the River to the Sea: Israel's Water Apartheid

The Zionist Vision of a Flourishing Israel Always Meant a Drought for Palestinians

On October 9^th, Israel’s Defence Minister ordered a complete siege on Gaza including the total cut-off of water supplies. This is a war crime under international law. Clean water is unavailable for most of the population in Gaza, and any water related infrastructure has been largely destroyed by the Israeli military.

Yet even prior to this, Israel’s water apartheid was an integral aspect of its discriminatory policies to deny Palestinians equal access to the same resources its own population have enjoyed unfettered access to since the establishment of the Zionist project.

It is important for us to know and understand how nothing started on October 7^th and everything started with the illegal and violent occupation of Palestine in 1967. The Zionist vision for the flourishing of Israel is inextricably bound up with the oppression of Palestinians – for no reason other than their existence in Palestine.

Water - the lifeblood of a land, sustaining existence, nurturing growth and vitality, and allowing new horizons to blossom forth through its fundamental role in health, agriculture and industry – for Palestinians, has always been subject to constriction and contamination by Israel, ultimately aimed at drying up any hope, and withering aspirations for future development.

The weaponization of water in the Middle East, specifically Occupied Palestine, arguably constitutes a crime against humanity from the start of Israel’s occupation. From its inception the Zionist project has sought to increasingly limit the supply of water to Palestinians in a multitude of ways, using the exploitation of water strategically, to further Israel’s occupation goals. The control and confiscation of water has prevented sustainable development as well as violating the rights of Palestinians to clean and safe water.

The UN committee on Economic, Cultural and Social rights states that an occupied population has the right to adequate living standards, including access to water. Israel, the occupying power, is under obligation to provide this. But since October 7^th we have seen international law violated in the most shocking and unprecedented ways, and indeed rendered impotent, as Israel has unleashed its vengeful rage on a besieged population of innocent people, as dictated by its brutal Dahiya doctrine of disproportionate punishment.

The water situation in Gaza is dire. Since the war, average consumption of water per person has fallen to 2-3 litres a day. But even before this, the water consumption of Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank was around 80 litres per day on average, which is below the minimum WHO standard of 100 litres a day. Most of this water is unsafe for human use. Given that it takes around 4 litres of water to wash your hands properly and 3 litres of drinkable water a day to stay adequately hydrated, this is catastrophic for the population.

The National Water Carrier project, Israel’s main water line, was an integral part of its Zionist aspiration to “make the desert bloom”. It is just one of the many facets of the Zionist “vision” of prosperity that is fundamentally tied up with the denial of basic human rights to the Palestinians. Completed in 1964, it constitutes an extensive network of pipelines, water stations and reservoirs that diverts 75% of the Jordan River’s water to Israel.

Prior to October 7^th, Israel controlled 100% of the Jordan River basin (with Palestinians not allowed access to any of this water, as well as water from freshwater springs). Over 80% of underground water resources from the Western Mountain aquifer, as well as 85% of groundwater resources available in the West Bank are diverted to Israel. Even cisterns harvesting rainwater for Palestinians have frequently been destroyed by Israeli military. In November 1967 Israel’s Military Order 158 stated that Palestinians can’t build any new, or develop any existing, water installation systems without permits from the Israeli army, which have traditionally been almost impossible to obtain.

Israel did not allow water transfer from the West Bank to Gaza, so Gaza’s only supply has been the Coastal Aquifer, which cannot supply the whole population, and has been so over-exploited down the years, it has resulted in severe depletion; additionally due to lack of proper sewage networks in Gaza it has become extremely contaminated, so that only 5-10% at the most, of water in Gaza is drinkable. This has exacerbated the spread of water borne diseases.

Additionally, the “apartheid wall” inside the West Bank separates Palestinians from their own land and water sources. Resultant to this is that many rural communities in the Occupied West Bank have no access to running water, and even in towns and villages, the water network, the irrigation channels supplying the agricultural land, have frequently dried up.

In the meantime, Israel developed its own water infrastructure supplying Israel and the illegal settlements. Mekorot, the Israeli state-owned water company manipulated existing water sources like wells, to supply its own population at the expense of Palestinians, while selling very limited amounts of water at exorbitant prices, to Palestinians who very frequently had to use up to half of their household budget to afford water.

Palestinians’ access to large parts of the West Bank was restricted, while Israeli settlers enjoyed swimming pools and other examples of unrestricted water usage. The water consumption typically enjoyed by your average Israeli was around four to eight times that of Palestinians in Occupied Palestine.

After the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, and the Israeli military authorities cementing their pernicious control over all water resources and related “infrastructure” in Occupied Palestine, the situation has become ever more drastic in its effects – until today where, since 7^th October, much of water and wastewater infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed or rendered unusable. Settlers and the Israeli military have deliberately contaminated and destroyed water wells, pumps and irrigation systems.

A Guardian article from August 2024 stated that in 2023, Israeli attacks on Palestinian water supplies in Occupied West Bank and Gaza accounted for a quarter of all worldwide water related violence. For example, in November Israeli airstrikes destroyed and damaged solar panels and related infrastructure that provided energy for the EU supported Gaza Central wastewater treatment plant, which served 1 million people in Gaza. They also pumped seawater into tunnel complexes that they claimed were used by Hamas. This severely compromised the basic conditions regarded necessary for life, for the population of Gaza – an act that is fundamental to the criterion for genocide.

The same Guardian article mentioned that violent Israeli settlers pumped wastewater onto Palestinian agricultural land in order to to damage crops, as well as demolishing the water tanks of schools, destroying water pipelines and uprooting Olive trees in occupied Hebron.

Israel’s water apartheid is one aspect of its many-tentacled apartheid chokehold over Palestine, in which Palestinians have suffered from denial of the most basic rights and living conditions. This has been going on for decades, with the situation becoming ever more desperate – until today, when the final attempts of the Zionist agenda to strangle off the remaining population through their post-October 7^th multi-pronged genocidal onslaught of bombing, killing, mass starvation and denial of medical facilities is unfolding as we speak.

Although Zionism is now laid bare for the world to see in all its naked savagery, it remains what it always was – a brutal machinery that could only perpetuate itself as a parasite does – through the insidious, creeping and eventually catastrophically malignant removal of its host.

Sobia Quazi

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