Denying water to Gaza has been a key tactic of the war from the very beginning, with Israel shutting off the pipes supplying the enclave on October 7. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that Israel was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”
At the end of October, an internal U.S. State Department report expressed concern that 52,000 pregnant women and over 30,000 babies under the age of six months were being forced to drink a potentially lethal mix of water polluted with sewage and salt from the sea. Since then, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been severely weakened by rampant hunger and disease, as well as the physical wounds inflicted on nearly 60,000 people and the mental stress of ceaseless bombardment that has taken more than 23,500 lives. All of this renders Palestinians in Gaza even more vulnerable to water-borne illnesses.
By the end of December, as WHO reported, the more than 1 million displaced Palestinians sheltering in the southern city of Rafah had access to, on average, one toilet for every 486 people, while across Gaza one shower served an average of 4,500 people. Sewage flows through the streets and contaminates the hastily erected tents in which hundreds of thousands of people now live throughout southern and central Gaza. Those who are menstruating face intense hardship, with menstrual products, toilets, and water all in direly short supply.
Hamas is still so happy with the destruction and death they’ve brought on the Palestinians. Pretty fucked up.
I’m just super fucking tired of the one-sided narrative on here. It’s fucking bizarre when talking about a dumb ass religious conflict between two assholes.
What? This is a continuation of a long-standing Israeli policy
The deprivation of water and the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure have long been part of the Israeli effort, in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, “to make the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population,” as a UN Fact Finding Mission stated in 2009.
Past Israeli military operations in both of these occupied territories have also led to the destruction of water resources. And for decades, Israel has used water grabbing to dispossess Palestinians of their land and ways of life — impeding Palestinian agriculture in the West Bank and for Palestinians inside Israel. But Israel’s weaponization of water within the framework of its current offensive on the Gaza Strip is on an entirely different scale, with the capacity to cause an unparalleled public health crisis and irreversible ecological damage.
Israel are assholes and the international community should have come along a long fucking time ago to address the bullshit settlement stuff. Absolute bellends. But you know, my god is better than yours, so fuck right off, amiright?
There are certainly religious aspects, but this is first and foremost a settler colonialist land grab Totally agree with the rest of your statement tho
“…the takeover of the West Bank in particular, with its ancient biblical sights, was a Zionist aim even before 1948 and it fitted the logic of the Zionist project as a whole. This logic can be summarized as the wish to take over as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians as possible… After the occupation, the new ruler confined the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in an impossible limbo: they were neither refugees nor citizens—they were, and still are, citizenless inhabitants. They were inmates, and in many respects still are, of a huge prison in which they have no civil, and human rights and no impact on their future. The world tolerates this situation because Israel claims —and the claim was never challenged until recently—that the situation is temporary…Israel is still incarcerating a third generation of Palestinians…and depicting these mega-prisons as temporary…”
Goes against the Geneva Convention.
Look this is just an aside but I want to suggest a blanket moratorium on the use of the following language:
“Something-gate”
If the thing did not occur at the Watergate hotel, or is actually not a gate, please refrain.
“Slam/ Slams/ Slamed”
Unless something or someone actually hit the ground with a thunk, retweeting Ted Cruz to all the people who already agree with you is not ‘slamming’ any one. See here for an example of some one getting slammed.
“something is now a weapon of mass destruction”
Look we’ve had enough issues around the use of this term incorrectly. Is what Israel doing a war-crime? Yes. Is it a genocide? Yes. Is it a weapon of mass destruction? No. No it is not. Thats the bombs they are dropping. Its those. Those are the weapons of mass destruction.
The laziness of journalists is just sometimes… shocking.
Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage. - Hunter Thompson (journalist)
Would you say you want to fustigate any editor or surrogate who treats the -gate suffix as obligate as they congregate to promulgate articles that castigate and instigate when they should mitigate or even derogate their profligate use of -gate?
But that’s not -gate, it’s -ate attached to Latin roots that already ended in g.
I agree, but must say I’m pretty disappointed that you didn’t use the time a GOP candidate literally body slammed a reporter and STILL got elected as your example of someone actually getting slammed…
Says a lot about the political climate that not only were you able to ever forget about something so bizarre, but it’s actually completely understandable!
This. So tired of having a discussion and some wise ass comes in and says oh I cant stand headlines with this word. So? Why share with the class? It adds nothing to the discussion besides letting the person stamp their feet in indignation while at the same time adding nothing of any value whatsoever. Congratulations. You shared an opinion that offers nothing but smug self glorification.
Christ, these headlines. What Israel is doing is abominable, but it’s nothing new. These are siege tactics and they’re practically as old as war itself.
Source? It doesn’t say anything like that in the article. It mentions that 30% of Gaza’s water is purchased from Israel, but that’s hardly claiming that “all rainwater” belongs to Israel.
Not trying to defend Israel’s actions here, but let’s keep claims fact-based.
However, according to Israeli military orders in effect in the area, rain is the property of the Israeli authorities and thus Palestinians are forbidden from gathering rain water for domestic or agricultural needs.
- UN Report
Israel even controls the collection of rain water throughout most of the West Bank, and rainwater harvesting cisterns owned by Palestinian communities are often destroyed by the Israeli army.
- Amnesty Report
https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/11/22/palestinians-rainwater-israeli-property/
The coveting of water of the occupied territories is nothing new, true. But unlike most sieges, this is done by an occupying power that has had total control over the food, water, electricity, borders, movement, aid, imports, and exports of the occupied territories for decades.
I agree the context makes the entire existence of a siege unusual here, I’m just pointing out that water and food deprivation have been used as tools of war for forever. The language used in the article—the “weaponization of water”—is meant to put a shiny new coat of paint on something ancient and make people think this is some new diabolical tactic Israel has invented on its own and that no one prior to them was barbaric enough to think of it. That’s what’s garbage journalism here.
Again, not defending Israel, just trying to point out sensationalist manipulative tactics on the part of this media outlet.
Maybe, just maybe, the international community have agreed on not following ancient tactics in war anymore since they are, Ancient?
This article makes it sound like Israel is restricting water supply, but its not. According to the UN (which is well known for not being a pro-Israel source), the water supply is restricted due to fuel shortages, bombing and poorly maintained water facilities: https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/barely-drop-drink-children-gaza-strip-do-not-access-90-cent-their-normal-water-use
This is after they “resumed” water supply (mostly coming from Egypt’s side).
“Wastewater and desalination facilities were shut down in mid-October due to fuel and electricity shortages and have been largely inoperable since, according to the Palestinian Water Authority.”
That article is about UNICEF operations providing water thru aid (such as aid trucks) which is also impeded by Israel by bombings and targeting of Palestinians trying to get that aid
In 1967, Israel seized control of all water resources in the newly occupied territories. To this day, it retains exclusive control over all the water resources that lie between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, with the exception of a short section of the coastal aquifer that runs under the Gaza Strip. Israel uses the water as it sees fit, ignoring the needs of Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip to such an extent that both areas suffer from a severe water shortage. In each of them, residents are not supplied enough water; in Gaza, even the water that is supplied is substandard and unfit for drinking.
Israel has been holding the Gaza Strip under blockade for more than a decade, since June 2007. It does not allow any materials in that it considers “dual purpose”, i.e., that can be used for either civilian or military purposes. This includes construction materials, such as cement and iron, and other raw materials. All these are needed to repair Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure, which were heavily damaged by Israeli bombings, especially in Operation Cast Lead (which began in late 2008) and Operation Protective Edge (the summer of 2014). The estimated damage amounts to some 34 million dollars. As of the end of 2015, more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza were still cut off from the public water network.
Infographic on how Israel controls water in OPT pre Oct 7
