Ending Water Apartheid in Palestine

Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank fighting for the right to a homeland, and for their basic right to water鈥攚hich Israel continues to deny.

As the enters its sixth month, the enclave鈥檚 population of about 2 million is struggling to survive with little access to life鈥檚 most basic necessity: water.

According to Euro-Med Monitor, those in the Gaza Strip have access to just for all needs, including drinking, cooking, and personal hygiene. The established international emergency water threshold 鈥攖en times what Gazans have now. At least 20 people have already , a number that will continue to rise as due to lack of clean water, leaving many unable to retain what few calories they ingest.

While the water crisis in Gaza is now catastrophic, the Palestinian struggle to access water long predates the current onslaught and is an issue in the West Bank, too. Before Israel鈥檚 October 2023 invasion, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had access to just 80 liters of water per person per day, while the World Health Organization estimates that individuals need as much to meet basic needs.

Despite significant investment in water and wastewater infrastructure in Palestine from (USAID), continues to fall.

The root cause of Palestine鈥檚 water crisis is not a lack of investment but the political reality that Israel, , manages water in a way that denies Palestinians fair access. call this 鈥渨ater apartheid.鈥� They say that recent Israeli tactics in Gaza, such as , are just the latest examples of

鈥淲ater apartheid describes a form of segregation that results in unequal access to water, where policies and practices ensure that water resources are disproportionately allocated to privileged groups while marginalized communities face scarcity and denial of access,鈥� explains Saker El Nour, a sociologist and co-founder of , a collective of researchers and activists that publishes a newsletter on water in Palestine.

While the specifics of these unfair water policies and practices look different from Gaza to the West Bank, the overall water crisis is by design. 鈥淲ater is weaponized as a tool of occupation and control,鈥� says El Nour.

In Gaza, as early as 2017, UNICEF estimated that from the enclave鈥檚 sole aquifer was unfit for consumption due to untreated wastewater and seawater pollution. Still, before Israel鈥檚 October 2023 invasion, the aquifer of Gaza鈥檚 water, with three desalination stations and three pipes from Israeli company Mekorot providing the remainder.

One of the largest contributors to the aquifer鈥檚 degradation is overuse. The aquifer is not overused because Gazan families consume too much water. It is because the aquifer is not able to sustain the territory鈥檚 population, which has swelled through to make way for Zionist settlement. Today, of those living in Gaza are refugees or descendants of refugees who were expelled from their homes elsewhere in Palestine.

While there were three operational desalination plants in Gaza before the current onslaught, these only of the enclave鈥檚 water supply, and . Those same restrictions have made it almost impossible for Gaza to scale up its wastewater infrastructure to prevent untreated waste from polluting the aquifer.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, an agreement made in the persists, although it was only . 鈥淭he agreement ended up being just a way to police water and Palestinian water professionals and water institutes,鈥� says Mariam Zaqout, a water and economics researcher at University College London.

Wielding this power, Israel uses the majority of the water pumped from the West Bank鈥檚 main groundwater basin and restricts . Israel uses all the water from the Jordan River, leaving none for Palestinian communities. It has also created a system of forced dependency where West Bank cities are left with no choice but to import water from Israel via its national network, which has been built out into the West Bank to support illegal settlements. Today, those Israeli settlers as West Bank Palestinians.

鈥淭here has been a lot of infrastructure building by Israel mainly to support settlements in the West Bank, all connected to Israel鈥檚 national water network,鈥� explains Jan Selby, a professor of International Politics and Climate Change at the University of Leeds. 鈥淏ut Palestinian communities have been connected to it at the same time, partly to make them dependent.鈥�

While Ramallah, a city in the central West Bank tucked into the Khalil Mountains, gets more annual rainfall than even famously gray London, it imports its water from Israel because restrictions on developing its own infrastructure, drilling wells, force it to do so.

鈥淭here is a segregationist thing of investing in water infrastructure for the settler population, allowing them to dig deeper wells to pull out more water, and constraining the Palestinian population, not letting them invest in improvements in their water infrastructure,鈥� explains Michael Mason, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics.

Solutions to these issues will include new infrastructure and water management agreements, but those must be developed within a new political reality. Even in Gaza now, where UNICEF estimates requires repair, Zaqout says she believes solutions must go far beyond the standard post-conflict paradigm of rebuilding and rehabilitating.

鈥淒evelopment aid is just a band-aid put on to make things look good, but it does not necessarily offer a sustainable solution,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he United Nations or USAID, for example, could spend a hundred million pounds to build a big water treatment plant, but then it gets bombed and that鈥檚 it鈥攏othing is protected.鈥�

What is needed instead, Zaqout says, is an end to Israel鈥檚 control over Palestinian resources and its attacks on infrastructure and autonomy for Palestinian decision-makers to 鈥渢hink about their water needs, design their own infrastructure, and manage and decide on how they want to allocate funds.鈥�

Mason says that the political pressure needed to push governments like those of the United States and the United Kingdom toward withholding support for Israel鈥檚 occupation could come from international courts and rights groups. Many of these are already spotlighting Israel鈥檚 weaponization of water.

When South Africa gave opening arguments in its case at the International Court of Justice in January, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, it argued that genocidal acts included the deprivation of access to adequate food and water and the deprivation of access to adequate sanitation. United Nations agencies have also been highlighting the acute water crisis in Gaza, with Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, arguing that 鈥� preventing the provision of safe drinking water [is a] brazen breach of international law.鈥�

At the grassroots level, Water Justice for Gaza is mobilizing popular support to help end water apartheid in Palestine and make connections to other struggles for water justice. Last December, to coincide with , it held a 鈥淒ay of Movement to End Water Apartheid.鈥� spoke and distributed information about Palestine鈥檚 water crisis, and online participants, including water protectors, farmworkers, researchers, and activists from around the world, shared their stories and support for the cause.

El Nour says the response 鈥渋ndicat[ed] a broad recognition of the interconnectedness of justice movements worldwide and the global resonance of the water crisis in Palestine.鈥�

Bringing about an end to this crisis in Palestine is ever more urgent as insufficient access to clean water threatens Palestinians nationwide and Gazans face an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Whether in the courtroom, online, or out on the streets, many in the global Palestinian rights movement are speaking out about water apartheid as part of their demands for meaningful change.

鈥淭he water issues are a reflection of those broader issues and the other way around,鈥� says Selby. 鈥淚f you resolve or address or manage to negotiate some kind of resolution or settlement to the core political issues of the conflict, the water issues are relatively easy to address.鈥�