“ ‘Former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali once famously warned, ‘The next war in the Middle East will be fought over water, not politics.” While wars have come and gone in the Middle East since that time, the water crisis has only grown, and in 2015 NASA found that 21 of the world’s 37 large aquifers are severely water-stressed. As such, Rajendra Singh has warned, “The third world war is at our gate, and it will be about water, if we don’t do something about this crisis.” Steven Solomon echoes this warning, writing in his book Water:
The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization that, ‘An impending global crisis of freshwater scarcity is fast emerging as a defining fulcrum of world politics and human civilization. For the first time in history, modern society’s unquenchable thirst … is significantly outstripping the sustainable supply of fresh, clean water … Just as oil conflicts were central to twentieth-century history, the struggle over freshwater is set to shape a new turning point in the world order and the destiny of civilization.’
Al-Haq wrote about this water scarcity in Palestine in their first entry for Kumi Now, observing that while Palestine is generally rich in water resources, those water resources are being exploited by Israeli interests while being denied to the Palestinians on the land. And they note that ‘around 600,000 Israeli settlers consume six times as much water as the entire Palestinian population of about 2.8 million in the West Bank. This discriminatory and inequitable allocation of water resources between Palestinians and Israelis has been described as creating a situation of Water-Apartheid. ‘ “