Water in Palestine

Palestinian water scarcity is as much a matter of access and governance as of hydrology.¹ In the West Bank, Palestinians draw a capped share of the shared mountain aquifer under an interim agreement and buy a growing share of their water from Israel’s MekorotMekorot Israel's national water carrier, set up before 1967 to convey water from sources of supply to agricultural, municipal and industrial customers. Source: West Bank and Gaza: Assessment of Restrictions on Palestinian Water Sector Development, World Bank (2009).^1 2 3 Gaza’s coastal aquifer was over-pumped and invaded by seawater long before the war that began in October 2023.³ The war has since damaged most of Gaza’s water and sanitation assets.⁴

Settlement in Palestine has long followed the springs. At Jericho, the perennial spring of ‘Ain es-Sultan has for millennia been an important source of water; it lies beside a tellTell In Middle Eastern archaeology, a raised mound marking the site of an ancient city. The word comes from the Arabic for hill. Source: Tell, Encyclopaedia Britannica with traces of human activity from about 10,500 BC.⁵ At Battir, south-west of Jerusalem, channels fed by underground sources water the terraces, and families share the water through a time-managed rotation that UNESCO describes as an ancient egalitarian system.⁶ Gaza’s coastal aquifer was historically shallow and of high quality.⁷ After 1967, authority over West Bank water resources passed to the area’s Israeli military commander, the World Bank records.¹ The Interim Agreement of 1995, Oslo IIOslo II The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, signed on 28 September 1995. It extended Palestinian self-rule beyond Gaza and Jericho and divided the West Bank and Gaza into areas A, B and C, with different shares of Palestinian and Israeli civil and security control. Source: Oslo Accords, Encyclopaedia Britannica, set up a Joint Water CommitteeJoint Water Committee A committee set up under Article 40 of Oslo II, with equal Israeli and Palestinian membership, to deal with water and sewage issues in the West Bank during the interim period. All its decisions must be reached by consensus. Source: Interim Agreement, Annex III, Article 40, reproduced by the National Academies Press for a five-year interim period and left Palestinian water rights to permanent-status negotiations.^8 1

The interim arrangements have outlasted their term. In 2023, Palestinians had 396.1 million m³ of water available, a quarter of it bought from Israeli water companies.³ In Gaza, the coastal aquifer supplied drinkable tap water until the 1990s.⁹ The war has since damaged about 88% of Gaza’s above-ground water and sanitation assets, and recovery needs reach US$4.24 billion, according to an EU, UN and World Bank assessment of April 2026.⁴ By August 2026, 63% of people in Gaza could not obtain six litres of drinking water a day, UNICEF said.¹⁰

One interactive map of Palestine's water, built from real geodata. Climate & drought maps the aridity gradient (WorldClim) with warming projections. The Water risk layer's WRI Aqueduct indicators, covering overall water risk, water stress and flood risk (plus groundwater decline where the trend is significant), shade each sub-basin by its 0–5 risk score. Demand shows where the population, and the water demand, concentrate. Infrastructure shows the Jordan River, treatment plants and desalination plants; the AQUASTAT inventory records no dams in Palestine. Shared waters outlines the transboundary river basins and aquifers that Palestine shares with other countries, each drawn in full across the border; hover an outline for the countries that share it. Hover any sub-basin or marker for detail; sources are cited under each view.

The West Bank and Gaza are two separate landscapes. FAO describes five zones from east to west: the Jordan Valley, the eastern slopes, the central highlands, the semi-coastal region and the coast.¹⁵ The central highlands run the length of the West Bank at 400–1,000 m.¹⁵ Their limestone hills act as a porous sponge. They absorb most of the rain, and much of it emerges as springs in the valleys and along the margins of the highlands.¹⁵ In 1998 the West Bank had 527 springs, but only 114 flowed at 0.1 litres a second or more.¹⁵ Gaza lies on the coastal plain, above a shallow aquifer that continues from Israel’s coastal aquifer.¹⁵

Rainfall

The climate is eastern Mediterranean, with cool, rainy winters, hot, dry summers and 100–700 mm of rain a year.¹⁵ In the West Bank the eastern slopes receive 150–300 mm. The central highlands get 300 mm in the south and 600 mm in the north, and the semi-coastal zone 400–700 mm.¹⁵ The Gaza Strip receives 200–400 mm.¹⁵ Long-term averages are 409 mm a year in the West Bank and 300 mm in Gaza.¹⁵ Recent years have been drier in Gaza. In its appraisal of the Gaza central desalination programme, the World Bank reported that average annual rainfall in Gaza had fallen by 20–30% over the previous five years, and recharge by 10–20%.¹⁶ Over a longer span, the national adaptation plan found very low confidence in any rainfall trend over the past 50 years.¹⁷

In the World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal’s ERA5 reanalysis, averaged over the whole of Palestine, about 340 mm of rain falls in a year (1991–2020). Station records and national averages use other sources and baselines, so their figures can differ (the text cites long-term averages of 409 mm in the West Bank and 300 mm in Gaza from FAO). About 61% of the rain falls in December, January and February, and 4 months average less than 5 mm. Average rainfall in 1993–2022 was about 8% lower than in 1951–1980, and single years swing widely around that.

Temperature and the coast

Warm days and nights have become more frequent since 1950.¹⁷ Local records differ. Jerusalem warmed by 0.1 °C a decade in 1964–2011 and Jericho by 0.33 °C a decade in 1969–2008. In Gaza, average daily maximum and minimum temperatures fell in 1976–2006.¹⁷ Sea level off Gaza is rising by about 1.5 mm a year, which will speed up coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion.¹⁷

The same reanalysis gives a mean temperature of 20.2 °C for 1991–2020 and a warming of about 0.44 °C a decade over 1971–2022. Station records and national reports use other sources and periods, so their warming rates can differ.

Projections

The adaptation plan sets out three scenarios against 1986–2005.¹⁷ If global warming is held to 2 °C, temperatures rise by about 2 °C by 2090. In a mid-range scenario, warming reaches about 3 °C by 2090 and rainfall falls by about 20%, with more frequent droughts.¹⁷ If emissions go unchecked, warming reaches about 4.5 °C and rainfall falls by about 30% by 2090. Even then, the rare wettest days may become more frequent, especially in the West Bank.¹⁷

Projected change for Palestine

The table gives the CMIP6 multi-model median from the same World Bank portal, as change against 1995–2014. Projections cited in the text may use other models, scenarios or baselines, so their figures can differ.

The mountain aquifer holds high-quality karst water shared with Israel, allocated roughly 80/20 under Oslo's interim tables and unchanged since.¹ Palestinian abstraction is further limited by permits and infrastructure, and purchases from Israeli water companies fill the gap.³ Gaza’s pre-war supply and its state since the war are set out under Infrastructure.

Palestinians had 396.1 MCM of water available in 2023, against 448.4 MCM in 2020, the statistics bureau reports; it attributes the shortfall in 2023 to the war in Gaza in the last quarter of the year.^3 18 Of that, 98.5 MCM, a quarter of the total, was bought from Israeli water companies, Mekorot and Hagihon.³ Purchases rose from 20% of available water in 2020 and 22% in 2021 to 25% in 2023.^18 19 3 Palestinians have had no access to the Jordan River since 1967, a resource the same bodies estimate at about 250 MCM.¹⁸

Before the war, on official figures, abstraction from Gaza’s coastal aquifer reached 192.5 MCM in 2021, against a sustainable yield of 50–60 MCM, and the water table had fallen to 19 m below sea level.¹⁹ The statistics bureau’s table for 2023 gives 198.6 MCM, leaving out unlicensed wells.³

Supply by source

The main river

The main river of Palestine in the dataset is the Jordan, which also flows through Israel and Jordan. It runs 106 km in Palestine; its modelled natural flow, the long-term average before any withdrawals, reaches 57 m³/s inside the country, and 0% of that length is still classed as free-flowing.

How much reaches a household

Domestic consumption averaged 86.3 litres per person per day in 2021: 89.0 in the West Bank and 82.7 in Gaza. Counting only water fit to drink, Gaza’s share was 21.3 litres.¹⁹ B’Tselem reported average daily water consumption of 247 litres a person in Israel, settlements included, against 82.4 litres for Palestinians in the West Bank, in 2020.²⁰ Supply is also irregular. Only 36% of West Bank Palestinians receive running water every day, and 47% have it for fewer than 10 days a month.²¹ In the Jordan Valley community of Humsa–Al Baqai’a, residents buy tankered water at NIS 40 per m³, eight times the average West Bank price.²²

Farming and springs

Springs remain the largest single source of irrigation water for West Bank Palestinians, an OCHA survey found in 2011.²³

Use by sector

Withdrawals over time

FAO’s AQUASTAT puts Palestine’s total freshwater withdrawal at 373.6 million m³ in 2021 and 317.0 million m³ in 2023, with agriculture taking 34.7% and 35.1% of the total in those years.¹² The World Bank series charted below carries an older estimate: 281 million m³ in 2000 and 335 million m³ in 2021, with agriculture’s share moving from 47% in 2004 to 49% in 2021. Withdrawal is a different measure from the water available that the statistics bureau counts under Water resources (396.1 million m³ in 2023, including water bought from Israeli companies).

Most of Palestine’s farmland is rainfed. In the 2021 agriculture census, 655,272 of the 1,209,300 dunums in agricultural holdings, 54%, reported no water source, 18% used artesian wells, 15% the public network, 4% tanker trucks and 1% springs.²⁵ In the West Bank 58% of holdings’ area had no water source, against 4% in Gaza, where 81% used artesian wells.²⁵ The statistics bureau counted 230 km² of irrigated cultivated land, 22.5% of the total; the share is 96% in Jericho and Al-Aghwar and 86% in the Gaza Strip.²⁶ PCBS notes that 6.9 million m³ of water bought from the Israeli company Mekorot goes to agriculture in Tubas and the Northern Valleys.³ Springs, aquifer limits and withdrawals are under Water resources and Water use.

Constraints

FAO reported in 2008 that the Israeli authorities had introduced quotas on existing irrigation wells and had not allowed new irrigation wells to be drilled by Palestinian farmers.¹⁵ AQUASTAT carries 28,900 ha equipped for irrigation for 2021 to 2023, and 140,000 ha for 2020; the break is noted above.²⁸

Gaza

By 24 June 2026, FAO and UNOSAT found, 4,091 ha, 27% of Gaza’s cropland, were accessible, and only 448 ha, 3%, were both accessible and undamaged.²⁹ About 87% of cropland was damaged, as were 81% of the greenhouse area, and FAO says irrigation systems have suffered extensive losses.³⁰ Damage to agricultural wells rose from 83% in April 2025 to almost 87% in late September 2025.³¹ Farmers lack irrigation equipment, and FAO points to restrictions on imports of agricultural inputs.²⁹

Treated wastewater

AQUASTAT gives 24.5 million m³ of treated wastewater used directly in 2023, an FAO estimate, but the 2021 census records treated water as the main source for only 443 dunums.^28 25 A project of the NGO ANERA with a US$1 million OPEC Fund grant gave farmers in north-west Jenin access to 3,500 m³ a day from the Jenin treatment plant, irrigating 315 dunums, and 143,840 m³ were used in its first year.³² The TAJDID project, signed in May 2026 by the Palestinian Water Authority and the European Union, France (AFD) and Germany (KfW), is to build a plant of about 3,700 m³ a day with over 100 km of networks and infrastructure for reuse in agriculture, west of Jenin.^33 34 Plants are covered under Infrastructure; irrigation and reuse projects across the region are on the Agriculture & Food hub.

Before the war, Gaza’s supply rested on groundwater. The April 2026 damage assessment put pre-war pumping at about 96.2 million m³ a year from some 306 wells, without stating which wells it covers (a different count from the official figures under Water resources), and about 52,000 m³ a day came through three bulk connections from Israel.⁴ Three short-term desalination plants added about 18,000 m³ a day.⁴ In 2018 the World Bank reported that 97% of Gazans relied on private tankers and small informal desalination units for drinking water.² OCHA, counting by type of water rather than provider, reported that year that nine in ten people relied on desalinated water. Private vendors produced 81% of it, at 10–30 times the price of piped water. In 2016 only 48 of 154 vendors were licensed and monitored.⁹ Gaza’s largest seawater desalination plant, at Deir al Balah, opened in January 2017 with an initial output of 6,000 m³ a day.³⁵ A central desalination plant of 55 million m³ a year, expandable to twice that, was planned. A pledging conference in March 2018 raised about EUR 456 million for the plant and its associated works.¹⁶

Tracked projects

Open the project database for Palestine

West Bank supply

FAO reported in 2008 that wells in the Occupied Palestinian Territory were 100–150 m deep, that spring-to-farm canals and pools lost about 15 million m³ a year, and that many West Bank villages still used cisterns for domestic purposes.¹⁵ Networks reach most homes. World Bank reports from 2018 and 2020 put the share of the West Bank and Gaza connected to a water network at about 93%.^2 36 Losses are high. The World Bank put non-revenue water at 29% among West Bank service providers and 40% in Gaza.²

Wastewater

World Bank figures published in 2020 showed sewerage networks reaching 73% of Gaza households and 32% of West Bank households.³⁶ In Gaza, 46 million m³ of wastewater a year still went untreated or partly treated into natural drains.³⁶ Three new plants were meant to change that. North Gaza, at about 35,600 m³ a day, entered full operation in March 2018, and Khan Younis started in November 2019 at 26,800 m³ a day.³⁶ With a third plant at Al-Bureij, they could treat 74% of the wastewater collected in Gaza.³⁶ In the West Bank, FAO found in 2008 that none of the few older treatment plants worked properly;¹⁵ newer plants such as Nablus West, designed for 14,000 m³ a day, have since come into operation.³⁷

War damage in Gaza

Two years of war wrecked the system. An EU, UN and World Bank assessment released in April 2026 put damage to water, sanitation and hygiene at US$1.7 billion, with losses of US$675.3 million.⁴ Recovery needs reach US$4.24 billion.⁴ About 88% of above-ground assets and 76% of underground networks were partly or fully damaged.⁴ All six wastewater treatment plants were out of action, and 70% of sewage pumping stations were inoperable.⁴ UNICEF, in a separate assessment, put the share of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure damaged at 70% in August 2026.¹⁰ One of the three main desalination plants and two of the three bulk connections were not working, and about 77% of households relied on water trucking.⁴ Before the war, about 81% of Gazans had access to safely managed water.⁴ Reconstruction plans put desalination, wastewater reuse and aquifer recharge first.⁴

Gaza’s coastal aquifer supplied drinkable tap water until the 1990s. In 2018 it supplied 95% of Gaza’s water, and 97% of this water was unfit for human consumption under WHO standards.⁹ Over-extraction has caused increasing seawater intrusion.⁹ Chloride and nitrate levels in water extracted in most areas exceed WHO-recommended levels by up to eight times, and nearly 70% of privately produced desalinated water has some level of contamination.³⁵ In 2017 the UN country team projected that no aquifer water would be safe to drink by 2020, and that the damage would become irreversible by then unless immediate remedial action was taken.³⁸

Gaza since October 2023

On 9 October 2023 Israel cut the water piped into Gaza, which had supplied about 12% of its total water and more than half of its drinking water.³⁹ Water production from October 2023 to mid-February 2024 fell to 5.7% of pre-war levels, on OCHA figures.³⁹ Disease followed. Between mid-October 2023 and mid-February 2024 the WHO recorded 222,620 cases of acute watery diarrhoea, more than half of them among children under five.⁴⁰ Poliovirus was isolated from six sewage samples collected in June 2024.⁴¹ In December 2024 Human Rights Watch concluded that cutting and restricting water, electricity and fuel amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination and acts of genocide.³⁹ Israel disputed the findings, saying its pipelines and desalination supplies were operating.⁴²

The ceasefire of October 2025 did not end the crisis. Half of Gaza’s families then had less than six litres per person a day for drinking and cooking, UNICEF found.⁴³ In a 29 May 2026 update UNICEF reported that 82% of families remained water-insecure, and that up to 70% could not collect that minimum, on WASH Cluster monitoring in March.⁴⁴ By August 2026, 63% of people could not obtain six litres of drinking water a day.¹⁰

The West Bank

Oslo II committed both sides to treat or properly dispose of all sewage.⁸

The reported indicators

On the latest values each country reports for SDG indicator 6.3.1, Palestine’s 72% (2024) ranks 10th of the 17 countries covered here that report it; years differ by country. The regional comparison is in the wastewater and reuse dashboard.

The Oslo framework

A military order of November 1967 had made any new Palestinian water installation subject to an army permit.⁴⁵ The Israeli–Palestinian Interim Agreement, Oslo II, was signed in Washington on 28 September 1995.⁴⁶ Its Article 40 recognised Palestinian water rights in the West Bank, to be settled in permanent-status negotiations. It put future Palestinian needs at 70–80 MCM a year and set out 28.6 MCM of additional supply for the interim period.⁸ A Joint Water Committee with equal representation would decide by consensus. Every new well and every increase in extraction, by either side, required its prior approval.⁸

Schedule 10 put the mountain aquifer’s annual recharge at 679 MCM. The existing uses it lists add up to 483 MCM for Israel and 118 MCM for Palestinians, with a further 78 MCM in the Eastern Aquifer left to be developed. In the Western Aquifer, the largest, 340 MCM was used within Israel and 22 MCM went to Palestinians.⁸

The committee’s record is contested. From 1995 to 2008 Palestinians submitted 602 applications and Israelis 135, a study of the committee files by Jan Selby found. Israeli wells and supply networks were all approved, against 30–66% of Palestinian wells. Every Palestinian application for a production well in the Western Aquifer was rejected.⁴⁷ Of the wastewater projects submitted from 1995 to 2008, 58% of Palestinian ones won Joint Water Committee and Israeli planning approval, against 96% of Israeli ones; his figures include approvals recorded up to the end of 2011.⁴⁷ In Area C, 60% of the West Bank, Palestinian projects also needed approval from Israel’s Civil Administration.⁴⁷ Israel’s Water Authority, for its part, says it supplied 60 MCM in 2014, well above its obligations.⁴⁸

The committee did not meet for six years before January 2017, when the two sides agreed to restart it.⁴⁹ In July 2017 the United States announced an Israeli sale of 32 MCM of water to the Palestinian Authority. The deal was framed as part of the Red Sea–Dead Sea scheme that Jordan later abandoned.^50 51 Palestine had acceded to the UN Watercourses Convention in 2015.⁵² Palestinian official statistics put Israeli control at more than 85% of Palestinian water.¹⁹

Springs and reservoirs on the ground

In a 2011 survey OCHA identified 56 springs near Israeli settlements. At 30 of them settlers had taken full control and Palestinians had no access: at 22, access was deterred by intimidation, threats and violence, and at eight it was prevented by physical obstacles, including fencing or the Barrier and closed military zones.^23 53 On 10 July 2026 Israeli soldiers raided Solomon’s Pools near Bethlehem. Two months earlier Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had threatened to erase the agreements confirming Palestinian ownership of the site.⁵⁴ Since the start of 2026 settlers have attacked the Ein Samia pumping station, which serves about 100,000 Palestinians in more than 20 communities, at least 10 times, according to the Jerusalem Water Undertaking. One attack in February cut water for 12 hours.⁵⁵

The record

Shared river basin

The agreements

Joint bodies

• Joint Water Committee between Israel and Palestine (JWC4)Jordan · 1995 · Israel, Palestine Territories

Shared aquifers

• Coastal Aquifer BasinEgypt, Israel, State of Palestine · data good
• Eastern Mountain AquiferIsrael, State of Palestine · data good
• Northeastern Mountain AquiferIsrael, State of Palestine · data good
• Western Mountain AquiferIsrael, State of Palestine · data good

Palestinian water development is still bound by Article 40 of the 1995 Interim Agreement (see Shared waters).² The 2014 Water Law created the Water Sector Regulatory Council, an independent body that reports to the Cabinet. It approves tariffs, licenses service providers and protects consumers.² The law also provides for a National Water Company as bulk supplier; the company was registered in September 2022, and the Water Authority stated that its gradual launch would start by the beginning of 2026.^56 57 Most service providers still ran under the 1997 local government law.² In Gaza, the World Bank helped build the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility as provider for all 25 municipalities, in 1995–99 and 2005–08, but the political division between Ramallah and Gaza led all municipalities except Rafah to assume service delivery in their own cities.³⁶ Weak capacity and political realities have limited the law’s implementation.¹⁶

Funding and finance

About US$1.3 billion was invested in water and sanitation between 2008 and 2018.³⁶ Cost recovery is weak. In Gaza, tariffs covered two-thirds of costs, but providers collected only 37 cents per dollar billed.² In the West Bank, providers collected 68% of bills, and tariffs ranged from NIS 1.63 to NIS 8.13 per m³.² Arrears to the bulk supplier reached about US$335 million in 2017.² In 2016 Israel’s finance minister deducted US$94 million from clearance revenues due to the Palestinian Authority for unpaid Mekorot water bills and wastewater treatment.²

Palestinian water outcomes are decided in negotiations as much as in aquifers. Gaza’s water, sanitation and hygiene sector needs costly recovery and reconstruction (see Infrastructure), and its aquifer was failing before the war. The climate adds pressure, with less rain projected by 2090 (see Geography & climate).

The Gaza recovery path has been costed: desalination, rebuilt networks and treatment plants, and wastewater reuse.⁴ The allocation of the shared aquifers remains a permanent-status issue under Oslo II.⁸ Progress depends on politics and security.⁴