Israel Uses Water as a Weapon Against the People of Gaza: New MSF Report

Authored by Dahdaleh Research Fellow and Director, Humanitarian Water Engineering Lab, Syed Imran Ali

A critical new report from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF/Doctors Without Borders)—drawing on its extensive operational data and medical evidence in Gaza, as well as first-hand testimonies—lays out in detail how Gaza's essential life-supporting water and sanitation systems have been deliberately weaponized, undermined, and destroyed by Israel in its war on Gaza. It describes a horrendous reality in which nearly 90 per cent of WASH infrastructure in Gaza— desalination plants, boreholes, pipelines, sewage systems—has been damaged or destroyed.

As Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide lays out "genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"—of which "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" is one such act.

The ample evidence of the deliberate destruction of life-supporting health, food, and water and sanitation systems, along with the plainly-stated genocidal intent of Israeli political and military leaders—both of which are extensively documented in the MSF report—make it impossible to avoid the obvious conclusion. Even if some want to continue to debate whether what Israel has done constitutes a genocide, these remain clear and atrocious war crimes.

And the genocide has not ended with the so-called ceasefire. Israeli attacks on water infrastructure and personnel have continued unabated—just in the past few weeks, Israeli forces killed a water engineer in a strike on the al-Zein well in northern Gaza and, four days earlier, shot dead two UNICEF water truck drivers at the main water collection point serving northern Gaza, as reported by The Guardian.

Along with these direct attacks, Israeli forces maintain a cruel siege upon Gaza that prevents the import of essential materials and fuel for the operation and rehabilitation of water and sanitation systems, including, as outlined in the MSF report: "water desalination units, pumps, chlorine and other chemicals to treat water, water tanks, insect repellent, and latrines". I understand from aid sector colleagues familiar with the situation that even engine oil, essential for vehicles and pumps, remains blocked to force the outright shutdown of whatever little remains functioning.

This wanton destruction and the deliberate blocking of any means to repair or operate what remains have allowed a waterborne infection crisis to spread throughout Gaza. As the Guardian article harrowingly details, "women report infections because they are unable to wash even when they are menstruating and after giving birth, and babies repeatedly get sick because there is no clean water for formula... Wounds become infested with larvae because people cannot wash them." MSF doctors in Gaza have also reported grave psychological harms including suicidal ideation caused by enduring the daily indignities wrought by such extreme water shortages.

At this point, anybody continuing to deny what is so plainly obvious is either willfully blind or carrying water (ironically) for génocidaires.

As Article I of the Genocide Convention states: “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.”

The Canadian government is a signatory to the Convention and, along with most other nations in the global minority world (the so-called “Global North” or “developed” world), has been derelict in its duty to prevent and to punish this crime. Even worse, the Canadian government has continued to provide ongoing military support to the genocidal government in Israel, an odious commitment it recently reaffirmed with the rejection of Bill C-233, a private member’s bill that would have closed a longstanding loophole exempting roughly half of Canada’s defence exports—those bound for the U.S.—from the human-rights risk assessments applied to all other arms sales, even as Canadian-made F-35 components and Quebec-manufactured explosives have been documented reaching Israel via U.S. intermediaries.

Professional groups, including those of engineers, water and wastewater system operators, and other technical specialties, though generally apolitical, must also consider whether silence in the face of such attacks against their professional counterparts globally is morally sound or even pragmatic. Are engineers okay with a world where it is considered normal to attack essential civilian infrastructure like wells and pumping stations and kill engineers just trying to do their jobs?

The need to act against these grave crimes is a moral and legal necessity in a world spinning further and further out of control. Silence is now complicity in the gravest of crimes and acquiescence to an emerging, horrific reordering of the world.

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