Water Fact – July 13, 2026

One of the methods the Israeli army has used to force Palestinian farmers off their land is to seal off their water wells and natural springs with concrete.  It appears indifferent to the ecological implications of its actions in a region which, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “is slated to be disproportionately affected by climate change.”

 

Carnegie’s report issued on May 14, 2026 outlines Palestinian efforts to design a national strategy for climate change when faced with the constraints of barriers, walls and checkpoints barring access to land, lack of control over resources and inability to expand the water, wastewater and electricity infrastructure.   A description of the context in which they are operating is worth quoting at length:

 

“The outlook for climate adaptation in Palestine is alarming. Today, only one in ten Gazans has access to potable water, and in the West Bank, 42 percent of the population is living under extreme vulnerability to climate effects.   Combined with trends of reduced precipitation and increased emissions that severely weaken Palestine’s water and food systems, the ongoing Israeli occupation further complicates Palestine’s recovery and, far more, the possibility of a sustainable recovery that equally benefits Palestinians and Israelis.  Any water management rights allotted to Palestine in the Oslo Accords are essentially negated by Israel’s veto power, consequently allowing for Israel to overabstract water resources and further limiting Palestine’s water availability and quality. Israel controls over 80 percent of the water resources in Palestine that originate from the Mountain Aquifer and the Jordan Valley, which Palestine has no access to despite bordering the Jordan Valley and Mediterranean Sea. UN projections show that climate change coupled with human activities—including urbanization, population growth, and contamination of water and soil due to Isarel’s war in Gaza—will significantly disrupt Palestine’s water, energy, agricultural, and health sectors well beyond existing shortcomings. Furthermore, as a result of climate impacts and absent legal oversight on Israel’s overabstraction, the rate of water renewal—how fast water resources are replenished, through methods like runoff and rainfall—has decreased, not only for the water resources Palestine currently accesses but also across the surrounding region.”

 

Water-starved Jordan is meanwhile having to deal with Israel’s use of water as a foreign policy tool.  In a 1994 treaty between Israel and Jordan, Israel agreed to provide its neighbor with 50 million cubic meters of subsidized water annually.  That amount was doubled in 2021 through commercial water sales in an agreement ending in late 2025, which Jordan is now trying to renew.  On July 12, 2026 The Times of Israel reported that Israel was reluctant to renew it because relations between the countries had chilled after the Gaza war, and that Israel has “reportedly conditioned the supply of the additional volume on Jordan moderating its relations towards Israel and restoring full diplomatic ties.”   

From the Gaza Ministry of Health

We warn of a total paralysis threatening transport and ambulance services due to the ongoing blockade and the ban on the entry of tires, batteries, spare parts, and oils.

- 70% of the Ministry’s vehicles are out of service due to direct targeting and the accumulation of technical malfunctions.

- Out of 82 ambulances, 39 are completely out of service, while 17 require urgent maintenance.

- Ministry teams carry out approximately 5,000 transport trips weekly for patients and medical staff, in addition to 140 truck trips weekly to transport medicines and medical supplies, amidst the threat of a system-wide shutdown.

- 100 service vehicles are out of service—including 30 that are beyond repair—while another 80 await emergency maintenance.

- The remaining vehicles suffer from a severe shortage of operational supplies and require 250 liters of oil monthly, while the ban on importing tires, batteries, and spare parts continues.

- The crisis has extended to buses from private transport companies contracted with the Ministry, which have been operating without periodic maintenance for months.

How Israel Lost Americans


July 8, 2026 Michelle Goldberg THE NEW YORK TIMES

It's not just Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians that have eroded Americans’ good will toward Israel. Perhaps as important has been Israel’s role in American politics.

It’s been obvious for some time that Americans are souring on Israel, but a Gallup poll that came out on Friday marks a turning point. For the first time in the poll’s 25-year history, it found, more Americans sympathize with the Palestinians than with the Israelis. The shift wasn’t just among Democrats, whose opinion of Israel has been in free fall in recent years. According to Gallup, only 30 percent of independents now sympathize with Israel; 41 percent sympathize with the Palestinians. Among adults under 35, support for Israel has fallen to a record low of 23 percent. With numbers like this, bipartisan backing for Israel, long a constant in American politics, will in time become unsustainable.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel famously prides himself on his ability to shape American policy. As he said in a secretly recorded 2001 conversation, “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.” Yet he has presided over an ongoing collapse in American Zionism and could eventually go down in history as the prime minister who lost Israel’s most important ally.

Israel’s imploding reputation is largely a consequence of its oppression of the Palestinians, in particular the mass killings in Gaza, which millions of Americans watched up close on social media. At the same time, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank — which is increasingly turning into outright annexation — is making Zionism and liberalism seem incompatible. Today, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, about 7.2 million Jews preside over a slightly larger number of Arabs, if you combine Israel’s Palestinian citizenry with the populations of Gaza and the West Bank. The majority of those Palestinians are stateless and have almost no guaranteed rights, as we see in the growing number of settler pogroms in the West Bank and the systematic ethnic cleansing of villages.

Read the entire article here.