Human Rights Watch has issued a devastating report concluding Israel is committing the crimes of extermination and genocide in Gaza by focusing on one crucial issue: water.

For Palestinians in Gaza, the most urgent daily task is the search for water. “Obtaining water has become like prospecting for gold,” explains H., a writer with We Are Not Numbers, “and whoever finds drinkable water is considered wealthy.”

The biggest obstacle to saving the fragile ecosystems of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea is Israel.

Protests have continued in the Palestinian village of Beita against the establishment of a settler outpost on the village’s land. Israeli forces have continued to violently suppress protests, killing two more Palestinians over the past month. “For more than 100 days we have been resisting against the occupation and the settlers,” Abed al-Fattah Hamayel, a local activist in Beita, told Mondoweiss. “And everyday the situation is becoming even more volatile. The soldiers are just waiting for any excuse, or just the right moment to kill anyone.”

There is an ongoing, but hidden, Israeli war on the Palestinians which is rarely highlighted or even known. It is a water war, which has been in the making for decades. The recent protests in the West Bank village of Beita are the latest example, where Palestinians are demanding land rights, water rights and basic human rights.

Water shortages in Gaza due to Israeli fuel cuts are leaving Palestinians in a double crisis: a COVID-19 lockdown combined with fears over meeting basic needs.

Israeli multinational water, irrigation, and sewage companies – some with connections to the Israeli military and prison service – have made significant inroads into the UK market.

Israel needs to change its economic doctrine which sees water as nothing more than a commodity to be sold or traded, and a political ideology that is fixated on holding on to as much water as possible.

At daybreak Kefah Adra set out to fill a plastic container of water from a nearby spring, a morning errand she has not done in 15 years. Like many Palestinian towns in this southern region of the West Bank, a-Tuwani is hemmed in by Israeli settlements, which a decade and a half ago cut off access to her water source. 

The catastrophic climate crisis is fueled by global inequality and engineered by complicit governments and corporations that put profit before people and planet. Everywhere, the least powerful are the most affected. Indigenous Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and apartheid, with no control over their land or natural resources, are highly vulnerable to the climate crisis.