https://fremont.hostmaster.org/articles/water_as_weapon/en.html
Water, the most fundamental necessity for life, has been weaponized throughout history - used to starve, sicken, displace, and destroy civilian populations. International law, developed through centuries of war and reflection, has explicitly outlawed the poisoning, destruction, or denial of access to water sources. Yet in the modern era, we find a state - Israel - that has repeatedly violated these norms, both historically and systematically, in its colonization and occupation of Palestinian land. From biological warfare in 1948 to infrastructural sabotage in the West Bank and siege tactics in Gaza, the use of water as a weapon remains a consistent feature of Zionist policy.
This essay traces the history of water weaponization, its prohibition under international law, and the evolution of Israeli tactics from outright poisoning to structural domination. It also explores how the failure of early Jewish revenge plots in postwar Europe helped catalyze a redirection of violence - culminating in the long and ongoing assault on Palestinian life through the control and destruction of water.
The deliberate poisoning of water sources has long been condemned as a heinous act of war. Ancient and medieval examples abound, from besieging armies contaminating wells with corpses to the use of natural toxins. As the laws of war evolved, such acts became legally and morally intolerable.
By the 20th century, such acts had become customary international law, binding on all states and actors. Yet these norms were quickly violated during the establishment of the Zionist state in Palestine.
In 1948, during the Nakba (the forced displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians), Israeli militias and scientific units carried out deliberate biological warfare operations against Palestinian civilians. One of the clearest examples of this was the poisoning of water supplies with typhoid bacteria:
These operations violated multiple provisions of the Hague Regulations, even in effect at the time, and fit within the doctrine of Plan Dalet - a broader strategy for depopulation and deterrence.
In 1945, the Nakam group - a network of Holocaust survivors committed to vengeance - plotted to poison the water supply in German cities such as Nuremberg and Munich. They infiltrated municipal water systems and obtained access maps, intending to kill millions using arsenic. But the plot failed when British authorities intercepted their leader and the poison was dumped into the sea.
Unable to reach or punish the Germans - geographically distant and politically protected - the group’s rage did not dissipate. It was redirected. A far more accessible and unprotected target was nearby: the Palestinian people. These were the same people who, during the Holocaust and the years leading up to it, had in many cases offered refuge to Jews when no Western state - including the U.S. and the U.K. - would accept them, as exemplified by the Evian Conference of 1938.
Just three years later, Zionist forces would poison Palestinian wells - not in revenge for the Holocaust, but as a tool of colonization and displacement. To justify this, they constructed a lie: that Palestinians, not Germans, were responsible for the Holocaust.
The most repeated version of this lie claims that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, “incited” or co-planned the Holocaust with Hitler. This claim collapses under scrutiny of the historical timeline but remains a staple of Israeli propaganda. Even today, hasbara accounts and Israeli politicians continue to repeat this distortion, calling Palestine supporters “Islamo-Nazis” or “Palinazis” - a narrative inversion meant to erase German guilt and justify Zionist violence against Palestinians.
While biological attacks have ceased, the weaponization of water has continued in more insidious forms - particularly in the West Bank, where the Israeli occupation regime has designed an elaborate system of structural deprivation:
This settler violence is enabled by state policies, particularly those rooted in Military Order 158 (1967), which requires Palestinians to obtain permits for any new water installation, including rainwater collection. Permits are almost never granted.
Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, oversees a system in which:
Meanwhile, Palestinians in the West Bank receive as little as 20–50 liters per day, far below the WHO’s minimum of 100 liters. Settlements enjoy irrigated farms and swimming pools. This is not scarcity - it is supremacy.
In Area C, over-extraction by Israel of the Mountain Aquifer has caused Palestinian wells to dry up or become saline. In places like Bardala and Al-Auja, agriculture is collapsing. The land itself is being killed. This is ecocide.
Even the sky is not free. Under Military Order 158, rainwater collection is criminalized. Cisterns built without permits are:
These practices violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, Hague Regulations (1907), and the human right to water under the ICESCR. Israelis consume at least four times as much water as Palestinians.
In Gaza, water has become not just a commodity - but a weapon of siege. Since 2007, Israel has blocked or bombed critical infrastructure:
As of 2025:
When images of emaciated Palestinian children circulate online, Israeli hasbara accounts dismiss them as victims of “genetic diseases.” The same claim was once made by Nazis about victims like Anne Frank, who died not in a gas chamber, but of typhus, a waterborne illness in Bergen-Belsen. The echoes are chilling.
Water has always been a weapon. But in the Zionist project, it has become a doctrine - a means of removal, punishment, and domination. From 1948 to the present, wells have been poisoned, aquifers plundered, and thirst criminalized. In Gaza, children die for lack of clean water. In the West Bank, entire communities are forced to abandon their land.
And yet, even as their water is stolen or destroyed, Palestinians are blamed - not only for resisting, but for the crimes of others. A population that helped save Jewish refugees from the Holocaust has become its scapegoat - not because of what they did, but because they were nearby.
To weaponize water is to wage war on life itself. And to shift the blame for genocide onto its survivors’ victims is to poison truth. If there is to be peace, there must first be justice. And justice begins by unmasking the weapon, naming the crime, and returning the water - both physical and moral - to those from whom it was stolen.