25th January 2024
Thirst as a Weapon: +110 Days of Water Deprivation in a Genocidal Context
On December 10, 2023, we launched the Gaza Water Justice Coalition, aiming to shed light on the critical state of water deprivation, destruction of water facilities, and weaponization of water in Israel’s ongoing attack on the Gaza Strip. Our team focuses on underreported water issues. We are motivated by the scarcity of knowledge production on water issues in Gaza and an eagerness to contribute effectively to the global movement against genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip. Our contribution involves intensifying academic, journalistic and activist discourse on water, documenting events, recording facts, and generating knowledge, primarily from Palestinians working on water issues in Palestine.
We received a significant response to our well-organized “Day of Movement to Stop Water Apartheid.” political actors, activists, and peasant and labour organisations worldwide joined in our online campaign. A photograph from a village in Pakistan illustrates the profound impact of our campaign.
Our first newsletter received favourable coverage on several platforms, including the Egyptian newspaper al-Manassa, the academic blog Jadaliyya, the Lebanese publication Raseef, The North African Food Sovereignty Network’s website, and the International Climate Justice Network’s newsletter.
This second issue of the WJG Newsletter comes after over 110 days of Israeli bombing of water infrastructure and the forced displacement of almost 2 million Gazans. Today, Gaza’s water and sanitation situation is more dire than ever. According to a recent report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), municipal wells in Gaza are at only 10% of their former capacity. The water they provide is often brackish and poses health risks. Only one of three Israeli-operated water lines is functional, and Gaza’s desalination plants have been reduced to less than 10% of their usual efficiency. There are too few water testing kits and chlorine in Gaza due to the Israeli blockade, increasing the risk of waterborne diseases. OCHA has already recorded more than 150 thousand cases of diarrhea in Gaza, signaling a dangerous deterioration in public health. The newsletter provides firsthand accounts from Palestinians, expert analyses, and a series of investigative reports that shed light on the gravity of this situation. We unravel the layers of the crisis, documenting the impacts of water deprivation on health, society, and the environment.
As a collective of researchers, activists, journalists, and concerned global citizens, we stand united in our call to liberate Palestine. Our objective is not just to raise awareness but to spur action and advocacy to end atrocities committed against Palestinians and restore their rights. We are grateful for your continued support and engagement with our work. Only through collective struggle and an unwavering commitment to Palestinian rights and global solidarity can we hope to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those affected by such grave injustices.
Upside-Down Reality: Exposing the Harsh Water Apartheid in Palestine
Even before the horrors of the three months, Palestine – and not just Gaza – was a model of upside-down water supplies and chronic water injustice. Consider just three facts:
First, Gaza was once a verdant oasis, a region of local water abundance and environmental plenitude. ‘We have crossed seventy leagues of desert – a very tiring business. Brackish water, often none at all,’ reported Napoleon Bonaparte following his trek through the Sinai Desert in 1799. But Gaza was different. Its ‘lemon bushes, olive groves, and broken ground are just like the scenery of the Languedoc,’ Napoleon wrote to one of his generals. Its climate, he added, ‘might be that of Paris.’ Through decades of settler-colonial violence, ghettoisation and impoverishment, Gaza’s natural beauty and bounty have been turned into an ecological and social disaster zone.
Second, despite its densely packed and predominantly refugee population, Gaza could easily have enough water. Across the world, almost all built-up areas of equivalent size have to ‘import’ water from beyond their municipal boundaries to meet local water needs. Modern Paris has to do this. Tel Aviv has to do this as well. Gaza is no different, except that Gaza is denied a meaningful water supply. Gaza is cut off from the land around it and bypassed by Israel’s highly integrated water network [1] [JS2], which prefers to send water to hothouse dairy farms in the Negev Desert than to Gaza’s Palestinians. Israel does not have a water shortage. Indeed, it has surplus water supplies that it is keen to market and sell — just not to Gaza.
Thirdly, what makes this all the more extraordinary is that the opposite applies to the West Bank. Rainfall and natural water resources are significantly greater in the West Bank than in Gaza, so the West Bank could easily manage without importing water from elsewhere. Yet because of Israeli restrictions on well drilling across the West Bank, Palestinians there have no option but to buy and import much of their water.
All of this is upside down. Ramallah, where it rains more than in London, is compelled to import water, paying for it to be sent uphill from Israel. By contrast, Gaza, a land that could not sensibly, with its modern population, depend mostly on its internal water resources, is forced to do just that. In both cases, and together, a system of water apartheid has inflicted water resource destruction, water poverty, and dependency upon Palestine. Palestine suffers from saline and polluted groundwaters, dried-up springs, forced reliance on Israeli and donor ‘generosity’, and agricultural decline, and its communities are left with nowhere close to the water supplies necessary to meet basic domestic needs – all right next to Israel, where water is in excess.
Moreover, the basics of this situation were established during the 1990s, under conditions of so-called ‘cooperation’ and ‘peace’. That Palestine needs water justice is self-evident. But this won’t be achieved without a complete dismantling of the apartheid system. While an end to Israel’s current genocidal campaign is, of course, the immediate priority, water justice for Palestine will demand much, much more.
*Jan Selby, Professor of International Politics and Climate Change at the University of Leeds, UK
Beyond the Headlines: A Story from the West Bank
Amid the horrific news from Gaza, another narrative is unfolding in the occupied West Bank. This is the story of my friend, who told me what she experienced over the past two weeks and the silent suffering of many other Palestinians.
“Due to the repeated raids, I was forced to leave my home in Ramallah and go to my parents’ home in Hebron, and this road is full of dangers and humiliation.” The road connecting the central and southern West Bank has turned into army clusters and checkpoints: checking identities, searching phones, and interrogations in small rooms. My friend said, “The soldiers checked our IDs and our phones, and I was interrogated in a small room.” Four hours later, at the entrance to Hebron, she said, “At gunpoint, I and those with me in the taxi were forced to cross the checkpoint on foot!” This is a humiliating reminder of the reality of permanent occupation.
After arriving safely at her parents’ home in Hebron, more horrific news emerged. Thirty souls were lost from her friend’s family in Gaza. When she spoke to her friend in Gaza, they chose to focus on the future, deliberately avoiding the term “Palestine,” which carries the burden of occupation. Instead, they spoke of dreams, education, and a future that has not yet blossomed. Laughter and stories have become a challenge to them, and they refuse to let the present dictate their future. This paradox between life and death is the essence of steadfastness in Palestine.
This story, beyond the headlines, demands attention. It is a call to remember the human cost of occupation throughout the occupied territories. It is a call to recognise the ability of the Palestinian people to withstand and their steadfast spirit that refuses to be broken. In the face of difficulties, it is a hope that one day Palestine will be liberated.
* Lamis Qdemat, Palestinian water management expert working in human rights and social equity.
The Coloniality of Israel: Water Innovation in the Apartheid State
As my fellow Gazans have been struggling to meet their basic needs, including those for water, since October 7, 2023, I am expected to continue my life as usual in the beautiful capital of England, London. I could not help but feel angry not at the Israeli Occupation and its allies starving my people to death but at my fellow water professionals and researchers. While this sounds trivial, I wrote this short piece not to advocate for Palestinians’ human right to water but to challenge the international water community. It haunts me every time I am asked to talk about the water crisis in Gaza and even the broader subject of ‘water conflict’ between Palestine and the Israeli Occupation.
I am a trained water engineer and researcher who often hears lectures from academics and professionals about Israel’s pioneering role in water technology innovation. On many occasions, most recently, last week, I have had to swallow my tongue when listening to people talk about water technology innovation. I was even asked in a job interview, “Why is Israel better than Palestine and Jordan in managing their water scarcity?” Israel is often portrayed as a leading nation in addressing water security thanks to its advanced desalination and wastewater treatment technologies and policies, and its people are one of the most educated and water-conscious communities. The notion of neutrality and objectivity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines have forced me to question my biases and often accept that “Israel is just so good you cannot deny it.”
Israel is celebrated as “The Start-Up Nation” that made the Middle East desert bloom. Making the desert bloom is a concept reproduced in other places, including California and Peru, where agribusinesses are prioritised over ensuring sustainability and the resilience of water resources. Israel is also held up as a role model for many countries, now exporting its water and agriculture expertise to different places like California, Vietnam and, more recently, India. Recently, via X (formerly Twitter), one of the Israeli ministers mocked the Palestinians’ inability to access water while Israel’s water innovation was celebrated at COP28. Israel has reached the stage of not only exporting technology but also exporting water to neighbouring countries like Jordan and water-intensive crops all around the globe (check your lovely Tesco Avocados).
As always, scientific breakthroughs and technological advancements are celebrated with little thought about the policies and systems that facilitated those breakthroughs, including overwriting other countries’ resources and rights. So, instead of sharing water with Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel controls that basin and sells water back to them on its terms. Its policies, enterprises and technologies, which were developed to provide water to the growing illegal settlements in Palestine, have systematically undermined water sustainability in the region and dried the water reserves for Palestinians and Jordanians. Yet this is not even mentioned when we discuss its pioneering role in the sector. Israel, like other colonial and imperialist entities, uses cultural and technological advances to whitewash its racist regime. My call to all water professionals, especially those shaping global water policies, is to remember to question what is considered a ‘best practice’ and what is not.
* Mariam Zaqout, Postdoctoral Researcher, University College London.
(Infra)Structural violence in Gaza: From Destruction to Reconstruction
The images and testimonies we have witnessed over the past 100 days of the genocidal assault on Gaza have been unbearable, unimaginable and utterly inhumane. Israeli officials have clearly stated their intent to make Gaza unlivable, and cutting water pipelines and destroying water infrastructure has been one of many acts committed to achieve this goal. The intensification of the systemic violence Palestinians have been enduring for 75 years means that Palestinians in Gaza are trying to survive excruciating conditions with a lack of the necessities of life: shelter, water, fuel, and food. With 1.9 million people displaced (85% of Gaza’s population) and sheltering in UNRWA facilities and other locations, the Municipality of Gaza shared that people in Gaza are getting less than 1 liter of water per person per day in some parts of the strip. Images from Northern Gaza show desolate ruins, debris and sewage flooding the remains of streets and neighbourhoods. This short piece intends to expose how this intensification of violence against Gaza and its basic infrastructure is part and parcel of a systematic, deliberate and calculated process of ‘de-development’ that has been ongoing for decades, turning the besieged Gaza Strip into a humanitarian region and disintegrating its economic and political systems and its significance and connections with the rest of the Palestinian homeland.
The isolation of Gaza has produced a highly problematic approach to crisis management by international aid agencies and Israel, most notably the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM), a mechanism through which reconstruction has been managed following the 2014 war, including that of constructing and maintaining water infrastructure. GRM adopted a highly techno-managerial approach to reconstruction, depoliticising Gaza’s predicament, absolving Israel of its responsibility towards the Gaza Strip and its population, and putting the burden of reconstruction on the international community. Humanitarian interventions to alleviate the compounded water crises in Gaza are inherently violent; infrastructural projects are deliberately destroyed; they create a vicious and unsustainable dependency on the occupation, they normalise the siege, and even result in inhumane conditions beyond the capacity of any society to endure in times of calamity and aggression.
By turning Gaza into a humanitarian crisis, Israel has facilitated, with the support of international actors and aid agencies, a system of population and space control which has kept the Gaza Strip and its population in conditions ill-suited to even the bare minimum of survival. Gazans have limited electricity for only 4 to 6 hours per day and a water supply unfit for human consumption. The entrance of raw materials necessary for constructing and operating vital infrastructure, such as wastewater treatment plants, desalination plants, and water networks, is strictly controlled. Following every assault on Gaza (4 destructive wars since 2008), and particularly this ongoing assault, Israel has also targeted water and energy systems, leaving millions of people, hospitals and shelters without access to safe water and entirely cut off from energy sources.
Violent, belligerent wars and the humanitarianism approach to normalising the siege are both imbued with structural violence (ongoing settler colonial erasure), spectacular violence (direct destruction of water networks, roads, hospitals and universities), and slow violence (normalising subtle but equally toxic and disastrous processes, policies and mechanisms). Demanding a ceasefire, allowing for immediate relief and support to those most in need, and alleviating the suffering of millions of people who are internally displaced are of the utmost urgency now. However, we also need to expose and oppose further depoliticisation and normalisation of an unlawful siege and the humanitarian violence that further distances Palestinians from their rights to self-determination and liberation.
*Muna Dajani, LSE Fellow in Environment, Department of Geography and Environment.
Download this issue from the Link
Newly published and actions:
- WASH situation in the Gaza Strip Emergency (Dec 14, 2023) | Lived Experience https://wash.leeds.ac.uk/wash-situation-in-the-gaza-strip-emergency-2023-lived-experience/
- Emily McKee and Alaa, A M, Weaponizing Water, Desiccating Palestinian Life, (Jan 15, 202) https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45719/Weaponizing-Water,-Desiccating-Palestinian-Life
- Nancy Murray and Amahl Bishara, In Gaza, Israel has turned water into a weapon of mass destruction (Jan16, 2024), https://www.972mag.com/gaza-israel-water-weapon/
- Palestine Chronicle,The Girl with the Red Pajamas: Children Finding Water in Gaza (Jan18, 2024) https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-girl-with-the-red-pajamas-children-finding-water-in-gaza-photos/
- With hundreds of water researchers, activists, and engaged citizens, WJG members have signed this Call for Action: Against Weaponizing Water in Gaza, and invite all to join us. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeCLziNz7qud12-2lZ7uLJGZeeilEBH1J7egnIG5Al_LG-fXA/viewform?pli=1
To send us a statement for our next issue, email us at waterjustice4gaza@gmail.com
X: WJ4Gaza
