Thursday, 4 April 2024 — The Tricontinental

Diego Rivera (Mexico), El Agua, Origen de la Vida (‘Water, Origin of Life’), 1951.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

By November 2023, it was already clear that the Israeli government had begun to deny Palestinians in Gaza access to water. ‘Every hour that passes with Israel preventing the provision of safe drinking water in the Gaza strip, in brazen breach of international law, puts Gazans at risk of dying of thirst and diseases related to the lack of safe drinking water’, said Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation. ‘Israel’, he noted, ‘must stop using water as a weapon of war’. Before Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza, 97 percent of the water in Gaza’s only coastal aquifer was already unsafe for human consumption based on World Health Organisation standards. Over the course of its many attacks, Israel has all but destroyed Gaza’s water purification system and prevented the entry of materials and chemicals needed for repair.

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