Water Apartheid

 By Micki Luckey

Can you imagine living on 2-3 liters (roughly 2-3 quarts) of water a day?  That was the average water consumed daily by a person living in Gaza before they were hit by even worse conditions under the on-going Israeli bombardments.  During its 75 year long occupation of Palestine, Israel has used many different strategies to force the Palestinians from their land. Controlling the water supply throughout the area has been one specific and effective weapon Israel continues to use to bolster its own development and to displace Palestinians.

Before October 7th, 2023, Gazans were spending a third of their income on water and regularly mixed the water from the tap with sea water to make it go farther.  The lack of clean drinking water had already made 25% of children in Gaza susceptible to gastric ailments and other diseases.  As part of their retaliation for October 7, Israeli forces increased their targeting of the water infrastructure in Gaza.  By November 2023 Israeli attacks had disrupted the sources (desalination plants, pipelines and wells) of all but 5% of Gaza’s water.   So now Gazans face “heightened health and environmental risks owing to limited access to clean water.”

Today people in Gaza are forced to drink polluted seawater.

This booth appeared at a 2024 Palestinian solidarity gathering. A person wearing a Netanyahu mask was promoting GAZA SPRINGS Sewage and Seawater with the ad, “A Taste of Genocide”. https://gazasprings.com/ photo by author.

Recent bombing destroyed a new desalination plant that took Gazans 7 years to build because the Israeli blockade prevented the needed pipes and other materials from reaching them.  Its completion in 2023 was cause for celebration—and hope.  Now the bombardment has destroyed it, along with most other water and sewage facilities.  In July 2024 Israeli soldiers posted a video * of their successful bombing of a water facility in Rafah, the very water station that Rachel Corrie (an American nonviolent activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer as she defended a home from demolition) had spent time defending. *translation from the Hebrew: The video is titled “Destruction of the Tal Sultan water reservoir in honor of Shabbat” and plays to a song by  soldiers of the 51st Golani Brigade singing “We will burn Gaza…shake all of Gaza…for every house you destroy we will destroy ten.”

Weaponizing water through the deliberate targeting of Palestinian water and sewage facilities is not limited to the current Israeli offensive in Gaza.  In past years the Israeli government has cut off the water supply to areas such as Jenin, at one time for more than 40 days (blamed by the Israelis on “problems in the water supply.”)   Amnesty International found in 2016 that almost 200,000 Palestinians in the West Bank did not have access to running water; furthermore they cannot collect water without permission.  Beyond denying access is the direct targeting of water infrastructure.  According to a UN report In May 2023,  “more than 270 water and sewage facilities used by Palestinians in Area C [which is 61% of the West Bank and wholly controlled by the Israeli military] have been demolished in the past five years.”

Has there always been a water shortage due to the arid climate?  For centuries the West Bank obtained water from the Jordan River along the eastern border and from the Mountain Aquifer, which runs north-south and provides fresh water to basins in the north, west and east.  (An aquifer is underground porous rock that stores groundwater and is normally replenished by rain and melted snow.)  Regions of the West Bank have had plentiful water: the village of Jafneh near Ramellah was famous for its fresh water canals, now ruined by settlements (from Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappé , p. 93). And Ramallah gets more rain than London.  

Although the average annual rainfall in Ramallah exceeds that in London,Israeli control of the water supply has meant that Palestinians in the West Bank receive less water per person than recommended by the World Health Organization and less than one quarter of the water available to Israeli individuals. For video with the text go to https://visualizingpalestine.org/visual/not-enough-water-in-west-bank/

As this diagram shows, the issue is control of the water at Ramallah, as the supply to Palestinians is drastically limited by Israel.  Control of the Mountain Aquifer was given to Israel by the Oslo agreements with the stipulation that the water be shared equitably between Israelis and Palestinians.  However, in 2023 it was reported that Israel has diverted 87% of the ground water for Israeli use and only 13% reaches Palestinians.

In 2019 this control allowed each Israeli settler to consume 369 liters of water daily, while Palestinians consumed an average of 73 liters per day, well below the 100 liters recommended by the World Health Organization.  (And remember today people in Gaza are getting 2-3 liters per day.)  In May 2023, B’Tselem reported that “About 100,000 Palestinians in 70 communities through the West Bank are not even hooked up to the water grid… [they consume] a mere 26 liters a day per person.  …These figures show that Palestinians in the West Bank are living with a severe water crisis.”

Furthermore, many Palestinian farmers and villagers have lost access to the water on their land due to the expansion of illegal settlements.  An example of settler encroachment and ultimately control is vividly described in the memoir of Ahed Tamimi.  The Tamimi’s village, Nabi Saleh, had a natural fresh water spring at which the villagers would fill their jugs twice every morning, first to water their goats and sheep and then to take to their families. “As a young girl, I relished playing by the spring.  On hot days, my cousins and I would splash one another with its cool water…That land, where the spring is located, is owned by one of the elders of the village, Bashir Tamimi.  It was passed down to him by his father, who inherited it from his grandfather.  But generations of family ownership didn’t matter to the Israeli settlers… the settlers of Halamish took our precious spring …”  The settlers built a pool, swing set and benches and renamed it Meir Spring.  Often armed with dogs and weapons, they harassed the villagers who came for water and sometimes denied them access.  It became too dangerous for Ahed and her friends to visit.   (From They Called Me a Lioness by Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri pp. 18-19)

This story of losing access to the spring of fresh water on their own land is fairly typical.  There are also reports of Israeli settlers poisoning Palestinian wells and shooting holes in water tanks, as well as in catchments on roofs.

In addition to uprooting olive trees, appropriating land, demolishing homes, and shooting to kill and wound far too many civilians and children, blocking access to water is a major way that Israel assaults the livelihood of all Palestinians.  It is a vicious kind of discrimination that affects the quality of everyday life and robs human dignity.  Water is indispensable to life.  The right to water is part of the human rights of all people.  It is time to end water apartheid, to end the Israeli Occupation, including its control of water, so the Palestinian people can live healthy, safe and thriving lives on their ancestral lands.