This parched land: The weaponisation of water in Gaza
Access to safe, and adequate amounts of water is a fundamental requirement for human survival. With its role in digestion processes, temperature regulation, cognitive function, and metabolism, even moderate deficits can adversely affect these biological systems. In the complete absence of access to water, adult survival rarely extends beyond four or five days. Babies and young infants may succumb within half that time, particularly where malnutrition, diarrhoea and disease coexist. The tragic reality is that over two billion people in the world do not have access to clean water, whether due to climate, conflict, politics or poverty. More often it’s a combination of all these factors.
For Gaza, the few waterways that exist inside its borders were never going to be capable of sustaining the needs of a forcefully inflated population. Fed by its major tributary the Besor Stream, the Wadi Gaza is the only natural source of flowing surface water in the Strip. Now it is filled with untreated sewage and is a major source of bacterial and viral infection. The coastal aquifer — Gaza’s groundwater basin — has suffered the same fate. Less than 5% of water from either source was suitable for human consumption, even before the Israel-Hamas war. In the past, blame has been placed on apathy, mismanagement, over-extraction of the aquifer and a lack of regulation by Gazan authorities. The root cause of water scarcity lies elsewhere. For decades, Israel’s politics, military action and urban planning have resulted in the diversion and utilisation of waterways for self-serving purposes.
Military Orders no. 58, 92 and 158
The entire population of the Levant — Arab, Jewish, Bedouin and others — all suffered oppression through the restricted availability of food and water at some point in history, whether by natural or man-made means. One early reference point for Israel’s part in this is the start of the Nakba in the late 1940s. Systemic and violent depopulation of Arab villages created the diaspora whose descendants now inhabit Gaza. Things took a further malevolent turn in 1967, when Israel enforced a series of military edicts in Gaza and the West Bank. Military Order no. 58 stated all new water installations required approval via a permit application system. Rejection of requests could occur without any obligation on the part of the licencing officer to provide a reason. Under Order no. 92, all water issues were to be referred to an Israeli court-appointed water officer, again with no option for appeal on outcomes. Military Order no. 158 cemented the issue. All wells, springs and new water projects were now to be held strictly under military command, with the added threat of immediate confiscation and arrest if any licence application processes were bypassed.
The overwhelming suspicion was these restrictions were further steps to assist the expulsion of the Arab community from the land. This was confirmed by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s comment that “We should deal with this issue quietly, calmly and covertly, and should be finding a way for them to emigrate to other countries…perhaps if we don’t give them enough water, they won’t have a choice, because the orchards will yellow and wither.”
Blockade and the destruction of water infrastructure
Prior to 7th October 2023, there were three main sources of potable water in Gaza. Three large desalination plants provided around 7% of needs. Their capacity depended heavily on available fuel and electricity supplies. Mekorot, the state-run company that supplies most of Israel’s own drinking water and farm irrigation needs, provided a further 13% of Gaza’s water requirements. This was via three mainline pipes connected to Israel’s National Water Carrier network, as part of a purchase agreement between Mekorot and the Palestinian Authority. But with supply levels again under strict control of the Israeli government, the taps were turned off on 9th October 2023.
Gaza’s Water Authority engineers stood by and watched as each of the Mekorot pipe output dials plummeted from about 1000 cubic metres per hour to zero. Supply was restored some days later following demands from the international community but levels never returned to that of pre-conflict times. The remainder of Gaza’s water came from about 300 wells which extracted aquifer water, which was then processed by small desalination units. Virtually all of the collected aquifer water was considered unfit for human consumption, due to sewage contamination.
At the start of the Israel-Hamas war, assessing the initial extent of airstrike damage to wells, pumps and pumping stations was difficult. There were a couple of knowns, quite apart from the chronically contaminated aquifer and disrupted water treatment systems. With Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s announcement of an immediate and complete blockade, chances of water brought across the border by truck were nil. Electricity and gas would also no longer be supplied to Gaza. Shutdown of most of the Strip’s desalination plants was therefore inevitable. Some plants had been installed with solar panel fields over the years as a way of circumventing blockades, but the high visibility of the panels only made them easy targets for the IDF.
Progressive extensions made by Israel to the evacuation zones put further demands on the limited available water supplies in the south, as civilians were funnelled along evacuation routes. In a brief November ceasefire, UNRWA and UNICEF were able to restore some fuel and power supplies. A few desalination plants and wells were able to operate again, even if temporarily. Aid was unable to reach the plants in the north, though that would have been futile. The main EU-funded plant and an associated coastal well had been hit by airstrikes. The Gaza Central Wastewater Plant was another target, along with its solar field.
Satellite images obtained in the spring of 2024 provided an objective view of damage to general infrastructure of the whole of Gaza, including water treatment and supply facilities. These pictures confirmed the earlier estimations that more than half of all water supply and treatment facilities were damaged. By matching images to data registered with the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), all of Gaza’s six wastewater treatment plants were identified as non-operational.
Damage to water facilities was not only limited to the northern end. Video evidence posted online, but hastily removed, showed Israeli ground troops rigging explosives to pumps at Canada Reservoir in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah. The three-million litre-capacity reservoir had previously served 150,000 inhabitants in southern Gaza. Large water storage tanks in Khan Younis were also wrecked. In the east of the city, a team of CMWU water engineers were killed while on their way to undertake repairs. Their car convoy had been clearly marked, and the work had been given prior clearance by Israeli authorities.
In the past, Oxfam had frequently highlighted bureaucratic challenges in obtaining Israeli permission to install and repair desalination units. In July 2024, it went a step further, with a report that directly accused the Israeli government of weaponising water. Attention was brought to an eight-month period in which the Mekorot capacity had been cut by 78 percent. The report also described how the IDF had destroyed CMWU’s primary water-quality testing laboratories in Gaza, and blocked Oxfam’s attempts to deliver their own testing equipment.
Emergence of infectious disease
The lack of water access, combined with poor sanitation and the convergence of most of the population in the south rang alarm bells among the medical community. Spikes in the incidence of diarrhoea and other intestinal disease were noted by healthcare workers working for Medecins San Frontieres, one of the first groups to raise concerns over the potential risk of cholera and polio outbreaks. In the summer of 2024, polio virus was isolated in sewage samples. It had been completely eradicated for 25 years up to that point.
It is almost impossible to avoid statistics when discussing infectious illness and malnutrition in Gaza. The Global Nutrition Cluster’s Nutrition Vulnerability and Situation Analysis indicated that within just a few months of the start of the war, 90% of children under five years of age had infectious disease. Nearly three-quarters had recent episodes of diarrhoea. Eight out of ten families lacked access to clean, safe water, which was a particular concern in households with babies reliant on it for reconstituted infant formula. Around 1 in 20 children attending health centres and in shelters were at a life-threatening stage of severe wasting, and a third of children under two years of age were acutely malnourished, double that of a few months earlier.
Childhood deaths related to malnutrition and dehydration as a result of blockade and displacement were now being reported. Spring and late summer saw some alleviation of food and water insecurity, as more convoys were able to cross the border and distribute supplies, but the peaks and troughs of aid distribution were erratic. One unwavering trend was the downward spiral in hydrational and nutritional health. Nearly 700,000 cases of infectious diarrhoea were recorded by the end of the first year of conflict.
A way ahead?
The future of those who have survived the conflict so far hangs in the balance. The whole humanitarian situation, let alone the water crisis, remains unresolved. Hypothesising where Gaza could go from here is complicated by Israel’s labelling of UNRWA as a terrorist organisation, Trump’s desire to demolish, rebuild and effectively own Gaza, foreign nations debating where and how to rehouse the civilian population, and who is going to pay for everything. Even all that depends on what Israel and Hamas’ intentions are for continuing the conflict. Whatever the final game plan, highly coordinated efforts will be required on all fronts. One focus must be on re-establishing WASH, the core element of public health models which encompasses systems to ensure safe water, sanitation and hygiene. Each component is interlinked and necessary to minimise health risks. Before the current conflict, WASH initiatives included improvement of the aquifer water quality, desalination plant maintenance, delivering tanked or bottled water, the distribution of hygiene kits and education on water safety. With EU funding, UNICEF completed an extension to the Southern Gaza Seawater Desalination Plant, the largest of its kind on the Strip. Hospitals, schools and early childhood centres were prioritised for improvements to sanitary facilities. Education sessions were rolled out across schools and community areas to promote the importance of hygiene. Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA) provided financial support over several years, allowing the NGO Anera to put in place over 50 diverse WASH programmes.
Many of these kinds of projects have had to be abandoned since October 2023. The rebirth of Gaza is likely to be more of a case of starting from scratch rather than picking up from where things left off. But of all the priorities, addressing the short- and long-term water crisis must be at the fore.
(Copyright 2025) E. Mark Windle is a freelance writer, with a former career as a clinical dietitian specialising in burn injury and critical care nutrition. He has also worked as a senior writer for Story Terrace (London, UK), and as a ghostwriter for Sheridan Hill / Real Life Stories LLC (North Carolina, USA). Full details of services and a portfolio of work is available at https://windlefreelance.com
