Harnessing hunger and thirst to drive out the Palestinians
Over the last few weeks Israel has escalated its water crimes, at least one of which – the reported Aug.18th bombing of a public reservoir serving the civilian population of the village of al-Mansouri in southern Lebanon – bears the markings of a war crime.
“Farmers in the northern West Bank could be on the verge of disappearing under the weight of Israeli land confiscation and the destruction of water wells,” writes Qassam Muaddi in Mondoweiss on Aug. 18. He describes how military and settler actions have systematically damaged wells and water lines, with the destruction of agriculture in the Palestinian breadbasket their apparent aim. “Israeli Bulldozing Intensifies Destruction of Farmland, Water Systems” is the headline of a similar Aug. 12 piece that states that large agriculture zones in the West Bank vital for feeding the Palestinian population are now “dry and inaccessible.” In the Gaza Strip, according to UNRWA, “more than seventy percent of Gaza’s water wells and irrigation systems have been damaged or destroyed, leaving farmers unable to irrigate even small plots” and systems for the production of food “decimated.”
Hunger and thirst are key to Netanyahu’s plan for what he calls ‘voluntary emigration’ of the population in the effort to empty the Gaza Strip. In his Haaretz column of Aug. 6, 2026, journalist Gideon Levy features an Israeli television interview conducted by 17-year-old Eitan Newman with rabidly racist former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin, leader of the Zehut party, to illustrate where this policy could lead:
“Newman: Call it what you want, ethnic cleansing, transfer, voluntary emigration, fine. So, I want to ask you, what will happen to the Gazan who won't want to emigrate?... Feiglin: First of all, the vast majority of them want to leave, okay? Newman: I asked about those who don't want to leave. Feiglin: We need to encourage them to leave, because whoever doesn't leave will murder you. Newman: That's not what I asked. I asked, what will you do to someone you wanted to leave and doesn't leave. Feiglin: You'll make him leave. Newman: What does ‘make’ mean? Feiglin: Every way possible. We'll shut off his water pipes, for example. Just an example…. Then he'll be thirsty. He'll have to leave to drink a cup of water. Just an example. Newman: So, for example, kind of kill off everyone?”
The theme of water used to control, expel or kill Palestinians is woven through the brilliant new bookUngrounding: The Architecture of Genocide (2026) by Forensic Architecture’s founder-director Eyal Weizman. For instance, he surfaces this story from Israel’s ‘war of independence’ which had been largely hushed up: “On 27 May 1948, Egyptian soldiers caught two Israeli soldiers near a well north of Gaza City. They admitted to throwing typhoid and dysentery microbes into the water. They were tried, convicted and hanged in the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza. A similar attack had been conducted three weeks earlier on the water system of the Palestinian town of Acre north of Haifa, and in village wells elsewhere. The rumour about the poisoned wells spread fast” (p. 63).
The evidence Weizman cites, unearthed through extensive archival research done by the Israeli historians Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar, indicates that Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, de facto army chief of staff Yigael Yadin and leading Israeli scientists were involved. The article by Morris and Kedar, “‘Cast thy bread’: Israeli biological warfare during the 1948 war”, was published in Middle EasternStudies in 2023. It makes it clear that the Zionists’ use of water as a weapon is at least as old as the State of Israel itself.
