Water Shutoff
Updated 2024-08-29
2024-07-25 The Politics of Water Under Occupation: Israel in Palestine The International Court of Justice released its historic advisory opinion on 19 July 2024 just as I was finishing my essay on Israel’s theft and abuse of the water resources of Palestine.
The 80-page opinion, “Legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” unequivocally states that “the State of Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful” and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible.”
The “Exploitation of natural resources” section (V/B.4, 124-133) was of particular interest to me. In it, the Court confirmed what I had set out to disclose, that Israel has used, misused and abused its illegal control over the water resources of Palestine to gain a permanent hold over all of the land. https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/25/the-politics-of-water-under-occupation-israel-in-palestine/
2024-07-22 Oxfam: Israel Has Reduced Water Access in Gaza by 94 Percent Since October Oxfam has warned that Israel’s longstanding policy of using water as a weapon against Palestinians has reached its peak amid Israel’s genocide, with water access for Palestinians in Gaza now at a small fraction of pre-genocide levels as Palestinians die of dehydration, starvation and disease.
According to a report on Israel’s water deprivation policies by Oxfam, Israel has reduced water access in Gaza by a whopping 94 percent since October. This means Palestinians only have access to an average of roughly 4.7 liters of water per person per day, or only about 1.2 gallons a day.
In the supposed “humanitarian safe zone” in al-Mawasi — which Israeli forces have attacked relentlessly — Palestinians only have access to an average of 2.5 liters per day, the report said. https://truthout.org/articles/oxfam-israel-has-reduced-water-access-in-gaza-by-94-percent-since-october/
2024-04-05 How Israel Weaponizes Water Even before Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza, 97 percent of the water in the sole coastal aquifer of Gaza was already unsafe for human consumption, writes Vijay Prashad.
By November 2023, it was already clear that the Israeli government had begun to deny Palestinians in Gaza access to water. “Every hour that passes with Israel preventing the provision of safe drinking water in the Gaza strip, in brazen breach of international law, puts Gazans at risk of dying of thirst and diseases related to the lack of safe drinking water’, said Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation.
“Israel,” he noted, “must stop using water as a weapon of war.” Before Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza, 97 percent of the water in Gaza’s only coastal aquifer was already unsafe for human consumption based on World Health Organisation standards. Over the course of its many attacks, Israel has all but destroyed Gaza’s water purification system and prevented the entry of materials and chemicals needed for repair.
In early October 2023, Israeli officials indicated that they would use their control over Gaza’s water systems as a means to perpetrate a genocide. As Israeli Major General Ghassan Alian, the head of the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), said on 10 October, “Human beasts are dealt with accordingly. Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza. No electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell.” https://consortiumnews.com/2024/04/05/how-israel-weaponizes-water/
2023-11-12 Palestinians in Gaza say finding clean drinking water is like “prospecting for gold” I’m a Jewish American who mentors young adult Gazan writers through a program called We Are Not Numbers (WANN). Or, at least, I did before October 7. Since Israel started bombing the territory and cut off most communications, I can only regularly reach one, A. (I’m using initials because Gazans are concerned about being targeted for retaliation if they criticize Israel).
We don’t discuss A.’s writing anymore. Instead, he sends me messages about how many hours he stands in line for bread each day without getting any (the record, so far, is 8). He sleeps with 50 other people on the floor of a hall with no working bathrooms, no electricity, and minimal food—as of a few days ago, his family was eating chocolate and chips as meals because it was all they could find on the emptying store shelves. But none of this is as pressing as the daily search for water.
There’s no running water in most of the city, because Israel shut off the pipes leading into Gaza and won’t allow any fuel in to power its desalination plants.
“people are drinking from municipality water (which is for washing/cleaning and not for drinking) due to the severe lack of water. Some people use a filter to purify either that water or water from the sea! Some people have wells beneath their homes but they don’t have electricity to pump it. Some Mosques donated water for people. They have to be in a loooong queue to fill a bottle of water. Some people are lucky and the rest are not.” https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/palestinians-in-gaza-say-finding-clean-drinking-water-is-like-prospecting-for-gold/
2023-11-09 Infectious Diseases Surging in Gaza Amid Israeli Siege, Healthcare System Collapse “The humanitarian suffering in Gaza has already reached catastrophic levels, and it’s set to get worse unless something changes immediately,” said one human rights official. The infectious disease outbreaks that doctors on the ground, public health officials, and humanitarian groups have been warning about for weeks in Gaza appear to be in full force, the World Health Organization said Thursday as it reiterated its call for a cease-fire to save lives.
The global public health organization said authorities have reported a surge in cases of diarrhea, with more than half of those affected children under the age of 5, as Israel’s decision to cut off fuel access in the blockaded enclave has shut down water desalination plants and disrupted waste collection. The circumstances have created “an environment conducive to the rapid and widespread proliferation of insects, rodents that can carry and transit diseases.”
By Thursday, said the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, all of Gaza’s 120 municipal water wells were expected to be depleted.
Health officials in the blockaded enclave, where nearly 11,000 civilians have now been killed, are also reporting nearly 9,000 cases of scabies and lice; 12,600 cases of skin rashes; more than 1,000 reports of chickenpox; and nearly 55,000 cases of upper respiratory infections as roughly 1.5 million displaced people crowd into hospitals, churches, schools, and shelters in search of safety from Israel’s relentless bombardment. https://www.commondreams.org/news/infectious-diseases-gaza
2023-05-17 A precious resource: how Israel uses water to control the West Bank In occupied West Bank villages, Israeli-owned farms are flourishing, while Palestinians often do not have enough water to drink. “It’s easy to see where the settlers are. Look at the olive grove below the cypress,” Haj Mohammed said, as a herd of goats passed by. “That is our land, but we are not farming it. See how close together the trees are? That’s because the settlers have access to the water supply and proper irrigation. Compare it to our trees, the ones that are spaced out more, and not in neat rows.” Israel is the world leader in water management and technology: last year, a first-of-its-kind project began pumping desalinated seawater from the Mediterranean northwards, to replenish the shrinking Sea of Galilee.
Yet rights groups contend that these successes are to the detriment of Palestinians; Israel controls about 80% of water reserves in the West Bank, but both the West Bank and Gaza Strip face severe water stress and drought. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/17/how-israel-uses-water-to-control-west-bank-palestine?
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