Humanitarian Situation Update #175 | West Bank

Key Highlights

  • More than 500 Palestinians and 12 Israelis have been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 7 October.  

  • About 280 olive and fig trees and 580 grape vine trees were vandalized by Israeli settlers in seven communities across the West Bank during the week-long reporting period. 

  • A Palestinian family in the Batn Al Hawa area of Silwan, in East Jerusalem, faces the risk of imminent forced displacement after the Israeli Supreme Court rejected their appeal against eviction.  

  • The DCO checkpoint, one of the main entrances to Ramallah and Al Bireh cities, was re-opened for the first time in eight months.

    Read the full report.

This was the home of a family in the Ras al ‘Amud area of East Jerusalem. The family was forced to demolish it following orders by Israeli authorities citing lack of a building permit, which is rarely granted for Palestinians. Photo by OCHA

Humanitarian Situation Update #174 | Gaza Strip

Key Highlights

  • Treatment of more than 3,000 children suffering from acute malnutrition is at risk of interruption if nutrition supplies are not distributed, UNICEF warns.

  • No bakeries are currently functional in Rafah and public health concerns are beyond crisis levels in Khan Younis and Deir al Balah, according to the World Food Programme.

  • The Emergency Committee for North Gaza municipalities declared Jabalya town, Jabalya Refugee Camp, Beit Lahya and Beit Hanoun as “disaster zones.”

  • Humanitarian space continues to further shrink, report UNRWA and the Protection Cluster.

    Read the full report.

Youssef (13) carrying bread for his family in Al Mawasi. Photo by UNICEF

Combatting Israel’s Water Apartheid

“People know about land grabs, they know about demolitions,” said Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, “but they know less about the water issue, including what’s called ‘the water grab.’”

Halper was speaking at a March 17 online film salon, “Israeli Apartheid in Action: Water Control,” organized by Voices From the Holy Land. The panelists explored how Israel uses water as a weapon of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and “slow genocide” in Gaza.

As described in a 2023 report by panelist Eyal Hareuveni, researcher at the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, Israel maintains near-complete control over the region’s freshwater aquifers, severely restricting Palestinians’ ability to drill wells, install pumps, build water tanks, access piped water and even collect rainwater.

The average Israeli consumes over three times the amount of water used by Palestinians on the water grid in the West Bank, and nine times the water used by West Bank Palestinians who do not have access to piped water. Nearly all Israeli citizens inside the 1948 boundaries and in settlements have running water, compared to just 36 percent of West Bank Palestinians.

Meanwhile, according to the United Nations, Gazans are now consuming less than three liters of water per day, hardly enough for survival, and Israel’s current bombardment of the Gaza Strip has rendered much of its water infrastructure (such as pumping stations and wastewater treatment facilities) inoperable. 


Read the article here. The Alliance’s Nancy Murray was one of the panelists.