Parched: Israel’s policy of water deprivation in the West Bank
Israeli soldiers surround a bulldozer as it destroys a Palestinian water well in the West Bank
B’Tselem reports on West Bank water deprivation in a new report, May 2003:
Executive summary
- Israelis, including those living in settlements, use an average of 247 liters of water a day per person – three times the quantity used by Palestinians in the West Bank, which amounts to 82.4 liters a person. In Palestinian communities that are not hooked up to the water grid, average daily water consumption is a mere 26 liters per person, much like the average in disaster zones.
- 92% of Palestinians in the West Bank store water in tanks on their rooftops to counter the chronic water shortage.
- In total, Israelis consumed 10 times the amount of water consumed by Palestinians in the West Bank in 2020 – although the Israeli population is only three times larger.
How many people have running water every day?
The Israeli apartheid regime works to promote and perpetuate Jewish supremacy in the entire area it controls from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, through land and immigration policies, movement restrictions and – as this report shows – management of water resources. Within this single water sector, the regime deliberately creates a huge disparity in consumption. One group enjoys the luxuries afforded by a first-world water superpower, its lifestyle effectively impervious to weather conditions and climate change. The other – Palestinian subjects – suffers a chronic water crisis that stands to grow along with climate change.
This policy clearly demonstrates the profound dehumanization Palestinians have undergone in Israeli society – a process that has enabled Israel to use the most basic of resources as a means of control and achieving political goals, even at the cost of keeping millions of people thirsty. This dehumanization also enables the systemic, cruel campaign to deprive the most vulnerable Palestinian communities in the hottest, most arid parts of the West Bank of their water sources, even in the blistering heat of summer, so Israel can rob them of what little possessions and land they have left and take over as much territory as possible, all in order to continue its settlement project and the dispossession of Palestinians.