LONDON: Israeli attacks on Palestinian water supplies accounted for a quarter of all water-related violence in 2023, according to the Water Conflict Chronology tracker.
Throughout the year, settlers — often sanctioned by or operating in tandem with the Israel Defense Forces — regularly carried out targeted attacks on water infrastructure across the occupied West Bank.
This included the contamination or destruction of wells, pumps and irrigation systems in more than 90 instances last year, the tracker found by monitoring news and UN reports as well as eyewitness accounts.
Last September, settlers from Shaarei Tikva used wastewater to poison Palestinian olive groves and crops east of Qalqilya, The Guardian reported.
An attack in November saw settlers demolish homes as well as a school’s water tanks and pipeline, in an attempt to make the area unlivable for Palestinian families.
As well as settler attacks, Israel’s invasion of Gaza has led to the destruction of most of the enclave’s water infrastructure.
Israel also struck energy sites that supplied a key wastewater treatment plant that served 1 million people in Gaza.
Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, an independent research and policy organization that created the conflict tracker in 1985, said: “There was a massive uptick in violence over water in 2023, widely around the world, but especially in the Middle East.”
