Beirut, Lebanon – Israel is attacking Lebanon’s water infrastructure, utilizing comparable techniques to its genocidal battle on Gaza, uprooting native populations.
Consultants say that Israel’s strikes on essential water infrastructure and close to websites being repaired after prior injury have successfully turned entry to water right into a weapon – and that has turn into a sample.
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“The impunity Israel loved in Gaza because it dedicated water battle crimes is once more on full show,” Bachir Ayoub, Oxfam’s Lebanon nation director, stated in a report published by the charity in late March. “The world has proven Israel can do what it needs, at any time when it needs, with out repercussion and once more it’s civilians who’re paying the final word value for this inaction.”
Displacement via water
Israel intensified its battle on Lebanon for the second time in lower than two years on March 2. Hours earlier, Hezbollah had fired rockets at Israel, breaking a 15-month interval of not responding to Israeli assaults and the greater than 10,000 ceasefire violations.
Hezbollah’s assault was additionally in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei two days later. Over the following few days, Israel would displace greater than 1.2 million individuals in Lebanon in a bombing marketing campaign throughout the nation.
Israel has killed journalists, medical workers, and devastated southern Lebanon’s medical infrastructure. Consultants instructed Al Jazeera that these acts, together with the destruction of Lebanon’s water infrastructure, are a part of a concerted effort to create an uninhabitable buffer zone in southern Lebanon.
Israel is at the moment occupying dozens of villages in southern Lebanon and stopping hundreds from returning residence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated earlier in April that Israeli forces “are remaining in Lebanon in a bolstered safety buffer zone”.
“It is a safety strip 10 kilometres [6.2 miles] deep, which is far stronger, extra intense, extra steady and extra strong than what we had beforehand,” Netanyahu stated. “That’s the place we’re, and we aren’t leaving.”
One method to forestall Lebanese from returning is by hanging Lebanon’s water infrastructure.
“Israel has declared its intent on elevating [towns and villages] to the bottom and stopping individuals from going again there,” Rami Zurayk, professor and chairperson of the Division of Panorama Design and Ecosystem Administration on the College of Agricultural and Meals Sciences, American College of Beirut, instructed Al Jazeera. “Each drop of water that Israel steals is a drop of the water that’s taken from the native inhabitants … Israel makes use of water as a way to displace individuals, and it displaces individuals as a way to steal the water.”
Israel broken six water amenities in southern Lebanon throughout earlier assaults on Lebanon since 2023, and within the first 4 days of the renewed battle this yr, “broken at the least seven important water sources together with reservoirs, pipe networks and pumping stations that equipped water to nearly 7,000 individuals within the Bekaa space alone”, in response to Oxfam Worldwide. Key infrastructure has been broken in areas like Britel and Nabi Chit within the Bekaa Valley, and in Marjayoun, in southern Lebanon.
Lebanon’s water infrastructure is being “immediately and not directly attacked and on objective”, asserted Nadim Farajalla, an environmental engineer and chief sustainability officer on the Lebanese American College in Beirut. “We noticed it in 2024 and now in 2026.”
The oblique assaults hit issues such because the electrical energy infrastructure, in order that pumping stations can not work to maneuver water or sewage. The direct assaults have hit the pumping stations, in addition to municipal employees working water wells.
The goal behind these assaults is “to pressure individuals to go away”, Farajalla stated. “With out electrical energy, you’ll be able to keep at nighttime and cook dinner with gasoline, however with out water, how will you reside?”
Israel has denied that its assaults are a deliberate try to weaponise entry to water, as a substitute framing its operations as essential for nationwide safety.
Burden of battle on water
Even earlier than the battle, the Lebanese state had did not ship quite a lot of primary companies, together with the availability of water, to its inhabitants for many years.
“The water provide state of affairs in Lebanon should be understood towards a backdrop of pre-existing vulnerabilities which were exacerbated by latest hostilities and the continuing financial disaster,” Imad Chiri, Worldwide Committee of the Pink Cross’s (ICRC) water and habitat coordinator, instructed Al Jazeera.
Southern Lebanon, like lots of the nation’s peripheries, has been significantly uncared for by the state. In October 2025, the ICRC performed a water insecurity examine in southern Lebanon’s Bint Jbeil and Marjayoun districts. Chiri defined that 91 % of households had been discovered to be experiencing moderate-to-high water insecurity – inadequate to fulfill every day wants. For 57 % of households, the state of affairs was dangerous sufficient for them to be labeled as extremely water insecure.
Throughout occasions of battle, water infrastructure comes beneath much more strain, significantly for areas internet hosting displaced individuals. And even primary injury to water infrastructure can result in compounding difficulties.
“There are two points at hand that you’ve to pay attention to,” Farajalla stated. “There are assaults on infrastructure, and there may be the burden on infrastructure as a consequence of displacement.”
“Water sources and networks are sometimes positioned in frontline or high-risk zones, but they proceed to produce populations who’ve chosen to stay,” Chiri stated. “Figuring out contractors keen to function beneath such situations is already difficult. Even after they agree, operations require meticulous planning, restricted time on website, and steady adaptation to a extremely risky safety atmosphere.”
Water as a weapon
Worldwide Humanitarian Legislation (IHL) “obliges events to a battle to take fixed care to spare water assets and water infrastructure,” Tadesse Kebebew, a authorized researcher and venture supervisor on the Geneva Water Hub, wrote for the ICRC in 2025.
Israel ratified the Geneva Conference – the idea for IHL – in 1951. However Zurayk stated that “Israel has by no means paid consideration to any of these conventions.”
In Gaza, for instance, Israel controls Palestinians’ entry to water. Israel has impeded Palestinians’ entry to water within the West Financial institution, too.
“The usage of water as a weapon has additionally been occurring in Lebanon for a very long time,” Zurayk stated, citing Lebanon’s accusation that Israel had obstructed entry to water from the Wazzani River, which crosses the Blue Line that separates Lebanese and Israeli territory, together with the bombing of pumping stations.
And destroying Lebanon’s already inadequate water infrastructure immediately contributes to sickness and demise.
“Not solely is that this about destroying entry to water, it’s truly inducing waterborne illnesses, the best reason for toddler mortality in creating international locations, and inducing this within the inhabitants,” Zurayk stated. “So it’s an oblique organic weapon. It’s a chemical weapon as a result of as a substitute of dousing, which Israel has executed, the area with the dangerous chemical compounds, what you do is you withdraw a vital chemical.”
Nonetheless, Israel has by no means been held accountable.
“The worldwide group stood by in Gaza and watched Israel’s weaponisation of water and its catastrophic penalties to males, ladies and kids there,” Ayoub stated within the Oxfam report from March. “The identical devastation should not be allowed to play out once more in Lebanon. Israel should be held to account for its violations and should not be allowed to occupy extra land, deny extra civilians of their primary rights, and proceed to abuse worldwide regulation with out consequence.”
