Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip.

The EU has concluded “there are indications” that Israel is in breach of human rights obligations over its conduct in Gaza and the West Bank. But that does not mean the bloc of 27 countries will impose sanctions on Israel anytime soon.

The EU’s foreign policy service has reached the cautious conclusion that “there are indications” that Israel is in breach of human rights obligations, in a review of its association agreement with the Middle Eastern country.

The EU-Israel association agreement, which came into force in 2000, underpins the relationship between the EU’s 27 member states and the Mediterranean nation, not only concerning trade but social and environmental cooperation.

Under pressure from EU member states appalled by the humanitarian blockade of the Gaza Strip, the EU’s high representative for foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, launched a review last month.

The review was based on article 2 of the agreement, which states that respect for human rights and democratic principles is an “essential element”.

What next?

The report, which is a leaked unpublished draft, is expected to be presented to Israel’s government by Kallas.

More immediately, she will outline the findings to the EU’s 27 foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday. She wants to assess how far governments back the review and what to do next.

While the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains catastrophic – with near daily fatal shootings of people queuing for food rations, warnings of famine and the collapse of water systems – EU processes move slowly.

How slowly?

Kallas is expected to present a list of possible options to foreign ministers in July. In theory these could include full suspension of trade with Israel, or freezing its participation in EU programmes, but nobody knows.

Such measures to put pressure on Israel would require further legal processes and their approval is highly uncertain.

Even hedged in the low-key, caveat-laden language of the EU, the leaked document marks a significant moment in EU-Israel relations. But it is far from clear if it will change the calculus for the Israeli government.

Summary

Since October 2023, Israeli authorities have deliberately obstructed Palestinians’ access to the adequate amount of water required for survival in the Gaza Strip.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a person needs between 50 and 100 liters of water per day in order to ensure that their “most basic needs are met.” In protracted emergency situations, the minimum amount of water required is 15 liters of water per person per day for drinking and washing. Yet, between October 2023 and September 2024, Israeli authorities’ actions have deprived the majority of the more than 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza of access to even that bare minimum amount of water, which has contributed to death and widespread disease. For many in Gaza, much or all of the water they have had access to is not suitable for drinking.

“If we can’t find drinkable water, we drink the sea water,” one father displaced to a school in Rafah told Human Rights Watch in December 2023. “It happened to me many times when I had to drink the sea water. You don’t understand how much we are suffering.”

Click to expand Image © 2024 Human Rights Watch

Click to expand Image © 2024 Human Rights Watch

Because of the decimation of the healthcare system in Gaza since October 2023, including disease tracking, the true scale of those harmed or killed by Israeli authorities’ actions that have deprived Palestinians of adequate water is unknown and may likely never be fully understood. However, these policies have likely contributed to thousands of deaths. Doctors and nurses told Human Rights Watch that they had seen numerous infants, children, and adults die from a combination of malnutrition, dehydration, and disease.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 66 Palestinians in Gaza between October 18, 2023, and July 23, 2024. They described the near-impossibility of securing water for themselves and their families. Human Rights Watch also spoke to four of Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU) employees, 31 doctors and healthcare professionals, and 15 individuals working with UN agencies and international aid organizations in Gaza, who described Israeli forces’ actions that have deprived Palestinians in Gaza of water, as well as the devastating health impacts, including death. Human Rights Watch also analyzed satellite imagery and verified photographs and videos captured between the beginning of the hostilities and August 2024. These show extensive damage and destruction to water and sanitation infrastructure, including the apparently deliberate, systematic razing of the solar panels powering four of Gaza’s six wastewater treatment plants by Israeli ground forces, as well as Israeli soldiers filming themselves demolishing a key water reservoir.

Israeli authorities did not reply to letters sent on June 10 and November 29, 2024, requesting information regarding specific attacks on water and sanitation infrastructure that Human Rights Watch documented.

Israeli authorities made clear their intention to deprive the population of Gaza of necessities after October 7, 2023. On October 9, then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered “a complete siege” on Gaza, stating “[t]here will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed.” On October 11, 2023, then-Energy Minister and current Minister of Defense Israel Katz echoed the call for electricity, water, and fuel to be cut, and on October 12, 2023, he called for humanitarian aid to be cut as well.

Since then, Israeli authorities and military forces have matched these statements with actions. Israeli authorities and forces cut off the water supply piped into Gaza from Israel and later restricted the supply, cut off the electricity supply from Israel to Gaza that was needed to operate water pumps, desalination plants, and sanitation infrastructure within Gaza, and blocked and restricted the fuel needed to run generators in the absence of electricity. They have also blocked United Nations agencies and humanitarian aid organizations from delivering critical water-related materials and other humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, damaged, and in some cases, deliberately destroyed water and sanitation infrastructure, including where Israeli forces were in control of the area, and prevented repairs by blocking imports of nearly all water-related material. Some Israeli strikes have killed water utility workers as they were trying to make repairs, while others have destroyed the main water-utility warehouse in Gaza which housed spare parts, equipment, and supplies critical to water production.

On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued provisional measures that included requiring Israel to prevent genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance, and prevent and punish incitement to commit genocide. The measures were adopted as part of a case brought by South Africa alleging that Israel was violating the Genocide Convention of 1948. At the time, the ICJ determined that “many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have no access to the most basic foodstuffs, potable water, electricity, essential medicines or heating.” Since then, the ICJ has issued two further provisional measures, reaffirming its prior orders, and stated in May that the orders should be “immediately and effectively implemented.”

Since that time, Israel has violated the ICJ’s measures, including preventing “the deprivation of access to adequate food and water.”

Water Deprivation as a Deliberate Act

In the days after the Hamas-led attacks by Palestinian armed groups in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, senior Israeli officials, including former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and former Energy Minister and current Defense Minister Israel Katz made public statements expressing the government’s aim to deprive civilians in Gaza of water.

Since that time, Israeli authorities have continued to call for the collective punishment of the population of Gaza, including through cutting off water and other items essential to life. While Israeli authorities have also made statements calling for measures to be taken to specifically target Hamas and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, authorities’ actions have amounted to cutting off or restricting water and other items essential to life to the whole of the population of Gaza. These measures persisted after the ICJ ruling in January 2024, and subsequent ICJ rulings, ordered Israeli authorities to end the risk of violations of the Genocide Convention. On August 5, for example, Israeli Finance Minister and Minister in the Ministry of Defense Bezalel Smotrich reiterated that Israel would be justified in depriving the civilian population of Gaza of water.

Cutting off and Restricting Water, Electricity, and Fuel

Immediately following their statements about plans to cut off water to Gaza in the aftermath of the Hamas-led armed groups’ October 7 assault, Israeli authorities proceeded to do exactly that. On October 9, 2023, they cut off water being piped into Gaza from Israel, which accounted for about 12 percent of Gaza’s total water supply and more than half of its drinking water.

While Israeli authorities resumed piping some water into Gaza from Israel at the end of October 2023, as of September 2024, they have continued to restrict the amount of water entering through the pipelines. The water from the pipelines has been insufficient to offset the decrease in water production caused by Israeli authorities’ cutting off of electricity supply and blocking and restricting of fuel imports, and by the damage or destruction of water infrastructure.

Israeli authorities also cut off the electricity that Israel supplies to Gaza, plunging the strip into darkness and impairing the operability of nearly all of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure, as well as other infrastructure necessary for the delivery of goods and services essential to life, including hospitals.

On October 12, 2023, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that “most residents in the Gaza Strip no longer have access to drinking water from service providers or domestic water through pipelines.”

Israeli authorities also initially blocked completely, and later severely restricted, the entry of fuel into Gaza. Israel’s obstruction of the entry of fuel has been particularly “debilitating” to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure in Gaza, which relied on fuel-powered generators after Israeli officials cut off electricity. After an initial five-week cut-off of all fuel imports into Gaza, Israeli authorities only allowed in an average of about one-fifth of the needed fuel for essential humanitarian activity from November 15, 2023, to August 31, 2024.

As a result, most water and sanitation infrastructure across Gaza has been unable to operate, according to the United Nations. Fuel is also needed for hospitals, rescue efforts, the delivery of aid, and to run bakeries, among other essential needs. Though Israeli authorities have allowed in varying amounts of fuel since the start of hostilities, it has been too little to power major water and sanitation infrastructure in the absence of electricity, and has been well-below pre-October 7 levels despite the greater need.

On February 29, 2024, the Union of Gaza Strip Municipalities stated that “[t]he depletion of fuel has severely affected the provision of essential services, resulting in [a] significant deficit in water supplies, solid waste accumulation, and wastewater leakage onto streets and residential areas.”

According to OCHA, between October 2023 and mid-February, 2024, water production in Gaza stood at just 5.7 percent of what it was before the current hostilities. Oxfam has also estimated that about 80 percent of the produced water is lost in leakages due to damage to the water network during the hostilities, meaning that the amount of water that people are receiving is far less than what is produced.

On March 28, the ICJ reaffirmed its January order and indicated additional measures ordering Israeli authorities to provide “unhindered” and “at scale … urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements.” Israeli authorities have flouted these orders.

As of September 2024, Israeli authorities continued to cut electricity to Gaza. Though Israeli authorities resumed piping some water into Gaza at the end of October 2023, and increased water piping in April 2024, the total combined water production—including water from the pipelines, desalination facilities, wells, and other sources—only rose to about 10 to 25 percent of pre-October 7 levels. As of August 2024, water production levels remained at about 25 percent of pre-October 7 levels, and the amount of water Palestinians in Gaza had access to was still far below the amount of water the population of Gaza requires for survival.

In the most recent, and most rigorous, study measuring water access throughout Gaza, nearly two-thirds of assessed households in August 2024 reported receiving less than six liters of water for drinking and cooking per person per day, below the nine recommended by international standards, and “approximately 1.4 million people face unsafe conditions when accessing sanitation facilities.” The survey was unable to gather data from some areas considered to be “hard to reach.”

Nearly every civilian in Gaza has also been displaced since the start of hostilities, many to areas that lack adequate water infrastructure, undermining people’s access to water regardless of the negligible improvements in the amount of water production.

Blocking Water-Related Aid

Israeli authorities have also significantly restricted humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, prevented aid deliveries to different areas within Gaza at various times, and have specifically blocked supplies related to water treatment and production.

Before October 7, 2023, about 500 trucks per working day entered Gaza with commercial and humanitarian goods. From October 21, 2023, to May 5, 2024, when Israel seized and closed the Rafah border crossing, only an average of 132 trucks per day entered; from May 5 to August 3, only an average of 33 trucks per day entered.

Of the aid that has entered Gaza, the Israeli military blocked much of it from reaching the north. Though the Israeli military ordered the entire population of over 1 million people to evacuate northern Gaza on October 13, 2023—one of the Israeli government’s many forced evacuations amounting to the war crime of forced displacement—many remained there, including people who could not flee due to age, disability, or other reasons, and others later returned. Those who remained did not have access to potable water from November 13, 2023, to at least April 15, 2024. Israel’s “evacuation system,” which has forcibly displaced the majority of people in Gaza, amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

For several months Israeli authorities repeatedly blocked aid that entered Gaza, including fuel needed to run generators for water and sanitation, from reaching areas in the north, despite reports of the severe hunger and thirst the population there was facing, a pattern that OCHA has described as “systematic.”

On February 24, a consortium of humanitarian organizations working in Gaza stated that “almost no aid is distributed beyond Rafah,” the southernmost of Gaza’s four governorates.

The ICJ, in its third set of provisional measures in May 2024, reaffirmed its previous two orders, and ordered Israel to keep the Rafah crossing open “for unhindered provision at scale of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.” Israel violated these orders. Israeli forces have closed the Rafah crossing since May 5, 2024.

For at least one month after the Israeli military began its ground attack on Rafah, almost no water or other humanitarian aid was accessible in the city, as the military further displaced most of the roughly 1 million people who had fled there from elsewhere. In many cases, people were displaced to areas with no access to services, including food, water, and aid. As part of the Israeli military’s ground attack on Rafah, they also seized and shut down the Rafah border crossing, which was a critical entry point for aid.

Israeli authorities have barred nearly all water-related humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, including water filtration systems, water tanks, and materials needed to repair water infrastructure. Several individuals working with humanitarian aid organizations told Human Rights Watch that Israeli authorities bar items they consider “dual use,” which they say could be used for military purposes. The humanitarian aid workers said that Israeli authorities have not provided a list of what items are included and do not provide written explanations or allow appeals of the rejection of life-saving items.

Israeli forces have also carried out attacks on humanitarian aid workers. Israeli forces have carried out at least eight attacks on aid workers’ convoys and premises in Gaza since October 2023, killing or injuring at least 31 aid workers and those with them, even though aid groups had provided their coordinates to the Israeli authorities to ensure their protection. As of August 28, 2024, more than 294 aid workers have been killed in the hostilities.

Furthermore, a number of governments suspended all funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which has been critical to providing water, food, shelter, and other vital services to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, after the Israeli government alleged that 19 of the agency’s 30,000 staff participated in the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023. On August 5, 2024, the UN Office of Oversight (OIOS) investigation found that in 10 cases there was insufficient or no evidence obtained to support the staff‘s involvement, and that the nine remaining staff members may have been involved in the attacks, all of whom were fired or have since died. Another independent review found that the agency itself was not at fault. While all countries outside of the US have resumed funding to UNRWA, the funding cuts, and the US government’s refusal to fulfill outstanding pledged contributions from late 2023 as well as its ban on new funding through at least March 2025, have had a severe impact on the agency’s ability to respond to the immense needs in Gaza.

The government of Israel has long campaigned against UNRWA and called for its closure. On October 28, 2024, the Israeli parliament passed two bills set to come into effect in January 2025, which aim to prevent UNRWA from operating within Israel’s “sovereign territory,” prohibit Israeli authorities from having any contact with UNRWA and its representatives, and terminate the June 1967 agreement between Israel and UNRWA, which facilitates the agency’s operations in the occupied Palestinian territory. UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated that the bills “could prevent UNRWA from continuing its essential work” in Palestine. The legislation would not only threaten aid for Gaza but also undermine UNRWA’s regional capacity to provide humanitarian assistance, education, and other essential services.

The State of Palestine Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Cluster (WASH) Cluster is a consortium of international organizations, United Nations agencies, international non-governmental organizations, and academic institutes led by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) that coordinates humanitarian response on WASH-related issues in the West Bank and Gaza. An individual working on the WASH response in Gaza said the cluster faced a range of challenges from Israeli authorities, including preventing repairs to WASH infrastructure, blocking needed WASH materials from entering Gaza, and not ensuring the safety of those providing WASH-related aid. He said: “I’ve never been in a response where two months after my arrival the situation is worse for the people than when we arrived. It’s the whole thing. We are stopped at so many levels [by Israeli authorities].”

Destruction of Water Infrastructure and Obstruction of Repairs

Human Rights Watch research found that since the start of hostilities, Israeli forces deliberately attacked and damaged or destroyed several major WASH facilities, including four of the Gaza Strip’s six wastewater treatment plants and an important water reservoir supplying water to people in Rafah in southern Gaza. In several cases, Human Rights Watch found evidence that Israeli ground forces were in control of the areas at the times they destroyed WASH infrastructure, including evidence such as a video of troops methodically laying and wiring up explosives inside a water reservoir, and satellite imagery showing bulldozer tracks on razed large solar-panel arrays which power wastewater plants. This evidence indicates that the destruction was not incidental to attacks on military objects, but rather, deliberate.

The overall damage to water infrastructure in Gaza during the hostilities has been massive. In January 2024, the World Bank and Ipsos, a market research firm, estimated that nearly 60 percent of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure had been damaged or destroyed by the hostilities. By August 2024, they reported that the percentage of WASH infrastructure that had been destroyed or damaged had risen to 84.6 percent. While it was not possible to determine the party responsible for the damage or destruction from these reports, the devastating impact on WASH infrastructure during the hostilities increases the likelihood of civilian harm in the deliberate cases of Israeli forces’ destruction of WASH infrastructure that Human Rights Watch documented.

OCHA reported on July 24 that the “water situation [in Gaza] was [continuing] to deteriorate.” Between July 24 and July 27, 2024, an Israeli soldier posted a video of himself and other soldiers laying explosives to destroy an important water reservoir serving Rafah in the south. The video, which was later deleted but reshared by other accounts, ends with a wide shot of the reservoir being destroyed in an explosion.

Obstruction of Repairs and Aid and Attacks on Water Workers

Israeli forces have also attacked and killed water workers while they were carrying out repairs and other activities to bring the population more water, and have destroyed materials needed for water repairs. In January 2024, Israeli forces also attacked the Gaza’s water authority’s—the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU)—main warehouse, where many employees and their families were sheltering, and subsequently set fire to the US$8 million of WASH equipment being stored there, virtually destroying the CMWU’s ability to repair damaged infrastructure.

They have also attacked water workers who were attempting to make repairs or conducting other water-related work. Following a process known as deconfliction meant to enable the safe passage of humanitarian workers in conflicts, the water workers’ coordinates had been shared with the Israeli military ahead of being sent out to make the repairs, CMWU employees said.

The amount of destruction to the water network caused by hostilities, and the general inability to make repairs, has led to significant water loss from the water entering Gaza’s water network. The CMWU and Oxfam estimated that approximately 80 percent of water produced in Gaza, as of July 2024, was being lost in leakages in the network as well as in spillage from water being delivered by trucking.

Illness and Death from Deprivation of Water and Sanitation

In November 2023, Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, stated that Israel was using water “as a weapon of war” by making the provision of this basic service contingent on meeting its objectives in the fighting. Arrojo-Agudo said that “[e]very 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.”

In July 2024, after conducting tests in Jordan, the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced that the poliovirus was found in sewage that runs between overcrowded tents of people who have been displaced by Israeli air strikes. One month later, on August 16, the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed the first case of polio in an unvaccinated 10-month-old child in Gaza, the first case present in Gaza in 25 years. On the same date, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that three children were showing symptoms of acute flaccid paralysis, raising concern that the virus could be spreading among children in Gaza. On August 23, the WHO confirmed that the 10-month-old child in whom the first case of polio was found is paralyzed.

The WHO has reported that the consumption of contaminated water has significantly increased the risk of bacterial infections like diarrhea. According to UNICEF, “cases of diarrhea in children under five years of age rose from 48,000 to 71,000 in just one week starting 17 December.” The 3,200 new daily cases recorded in December represented a 2,000 percent increase from the average rate of cases prior to October 7. As of October 17, there were at least 669,000 recorded cases of acute watery diarrhea since October 7, 2023, according to the WHO.

The total number of diarrhea cases, as well as of other diseases, is likely to be much higher, according to several doctors and health officials who spoke to Human Rights Watch.

A doctor who volunteered in Gaza in March and April 2024 told Human Rights Watch that during his two weeks treating patients there, he, other doctors, and virtually every person he encountered had diarrhea.

One man, describing what happened after he was forced to resort to getting unclean water from a well in his neighborhood rather than from the regular water network, said, “I was getting sick, my kids [ages 2 and 3] were vomiting and had diarrhea, and I had diarrhea. …. This was from the moment we started drinking the [dirty] water.”

The WHO also reported that there have been over 132,000 cases of jaundice, a sign of hepatitis A, as of October 2024. A doctor and a nurse described having multiple patients, mostly children, who died from hepatitis A, a disease that is treatable under normal circumstances. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital, said that about 5-10 percent of the children who came to Kamal Adwan hospital with suspected cases of hepatitis A died “due to lack of capabilities to diagnose, treat, and monitor them,” compared with a normal mortality rate of 0.1 percent in children under 15 years old.

The inability to effectively wash and shower, and the unsanitary conditions people are living in, have also led to over 225,000 cases of skin diseases, and contributed to the spread of over 1 million cases of acute respiratory infections as of October 17, 2024, according to the WHO.

“When we cannot get drinking water, taking a shower is a dream,” said a 36-year-old woman who was displaced to Khan Younis.

Dehydration and malnutrition also undermine people’s abilities to heal from wounds and disease, leading to infections, illnesses, and deaths. Several healthcare professionals told Human Rights Watch that they saw many people unable to heal from wounds, including surgical wounds, or had patients who succumbed to disease because of their weakened immune systems from malnutrition and dehydration. One emergency room nurse told Human Rights Watch that they were often forced to make the decision not to resuscitate children who were severely malnourished and dehydrated, explaining that “it was difficult to even resuscitate [people with] severe burns or wounds, because when [they] don’t have the hydration they die very quickly.”

The WHO has reported that “damaged water and sanitation systems, and dwindling cleaning supplies have made it almost impossible to maintain basic infection prevention and control measures” in health facilities. The lack of clean water and sanitation has also made it difficult, if not impossible, to treat water- and sanitation-related diseases, according to a public health physician at an international organization.

Devastating Impacts for Infants, Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women, and People with Disabilities

Several doctors and nurses described seeing large numbers of infants suffering from malnutrition, dehydration, and infection within their first few months of life, in some cases leading to death. Asma Taha, a pediatric nurse practitioner who volunteered in Gaza in May 2024, said that she saw one to three babies die “every day” from a combination of these causes.

Breastfeeding mothers often did not have the ability to breastfeed due to malnutrition and dehydration, leaving them to feed infants formula mixed with dirty water. An emergency room nurse who volunteered in Gaza, Abeerah Muhammed, also described seeing many pregnant women who were dehydrated, causing their fetuses’ heartbeats to slow down. She said that many pregnant women also came in with toxic shock or septic shock due to a combination of disease and malnutrition.

Bader Mosleh, a disability rights activist with a visual disability and father of three, told Human Rights Watch in October 2023 that he walked three kilometers each day to fill one plastic container of water, which holds several liters of water, for his family and five other families he was hosting. “Having 40 people in my house, that was not enough. We used small coffee cups to drink water to make sure everyone gets some.” Mosleh was reportedly killed in an Israeli airstrike on December 7, 2023.

Accessing water is especially hard for people with disabilities and UNICEF had previously reported that children with disabilities generally face additional difficulties accessing water, sanitation, and hygiene compared to other children.

A.J., 27, who uses a wheelchair and was sheltering in a school in Rafah in December 2023 together with his father who has quadriplegia and a sister who is blind, said that it is harder for both children and adults with disabilities to physically access adequate water because of their disabilities. “Because I am in a wheelchair, I am not able to go out and look for water,” he said. The amount of water available at the school where A.J. and his family were staying was scarce: they received only one liter per person each day, and there were days when they received none.

The mother of 14-year-old Ghazal, who has cerebral palsy, said that her daughter struggled to access sanitation and wash facilities due to inaccessibility and could only use the toilet or shower if her mother or sister were present to help her.

As of September 2024, Ghazal had fled Rafah and was sheltering with her family in a tent in al-Qarara, in Khan Younis. Accessing water remains a problem for her and her family. “We all now drink toxic, contaminated, and undrinkable water. [Ghazal’s] stomach pains haven’t stopped… We don’t have enough money to buy bottled water. We can’t afford it.”

Underreporting of Deaths, Disease Caused by Denial of Access to Water

Deaths in Gaza attributable to dehydration, water-borne diseases, and other complications resulting from a lack of clean water and sanitation are likely vastly underreported.

The decimation of the healthcare system, including disease tracking, has meant that confirmed cases of disease, as well as illnesses and deaths suspected to be linked to water-borne disease, dehydration, and starvation are not being systematically tracked or reported.

Taha stated that she believed many deaths at the clinic where she was volunteering went unregistered with Gaza’s Ministry of Health. “We had many babies brought in dead, malnourished. I don’t know if anyone registered them… [The doctors] have no time, they were overworked. They worked 24 hour shifts, 36 hour shifts.” She added that “[a]t some point we didn’t even have papers to write on.”

In an October 2024 letter to the Biden administration, 99 American physicians and nurses who volunteered in Gaza between October 2023 and October 2024 stated:

Israel’s continued, repeated displacement of the malnourished and sick population of Gaza, half of whom are children, to areas with no running water or even toilets available is absolutely shocking. It is virtually guaranteed to result in widespread death from viral and bacterial diarrheal diseases and pneumonias, particularly in children under the age of five. We worry that unknown thousands have already died from the lethal combination of malnutrition and disease, and that tens of thousands more will die in the coming months. Most of them will be young children.

The letter cited expert reports on food insecurity in Gaza since October 2023, which have quantified the number of people facing “emergency” and “catastrophic” levels of malnutrition. Based on the average daily death rates per-10,000-people at those levels of food insecurity, the healthcare providers estimated that more than 60,000 people in Gaza had died from malnutrition between October 2023 and June 2024, in addition to the tens of thousands directly killed in the hostilities.

“Even if the war stops, the level of destruction and damage to water and sanitation infrastructure will mean that humanitarian efforts will not be able to respond in a timely manner to save lives,” said Lama Abdul Samad, a WASH technical advisor on Oxfam’s Global Humanitarian Team. “That means that people may continue to suffer from a lack of water and food, and may become gravely sick due to a lack of sanitation and spread of diseases.”

Destruction of Health Infrastructure, Housing, Agriculture, and Forced Displacement

The impacts of Israeli forces’ destruction and damage to the water and sanitation infrastructure have been exacerbated by widespread destruction and damage during the hostilities to other elements critical for sustaining life and realizing human rights in Gaza, including healthcare facilities, housing, and agriculture.

In December, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) stated that Israeli authorities’ attacks on healthcare had led, by December 2023, to the “complete collapse … of the healthcare system in Gaza.” The destruction of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure has left hundreds of thousands of people with water-borne illnesses, dehydration, and other water- and sanitation-related health problems without adequate access to health care.

Israeli forces have also apparently destroyed agricultural products and land, including razing orchards, fields, and greenhouses, according to Human Rights Watch’s analysis of satellite imagery. As of December 30, 2023, The Wall Street Journal had already reported that as many as 80 percent of the buildings in northern Gaza had been damaged or destroyed in the hostilities, as well as half of the buildings across all of Gaza, based on analysis of satellite data.

Until significant reconstruction can take place, the widespread destruction to critical infrastructure, housing, and agricultural land will have severe consequences on people’s abilities to access water and to maintain basic sanitation.

Israeli forces have also impacted people’s lack of access to water through the repeated displacement of the population, including 1 million people who were displaced in May 2024 as part of Israel’s incursion into Rafah, without providing or facilitating access to water in the areas where they were told to evacuate. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention requires that parties to a conflict adhere to humanitarian standards when evacuating a population, including carrying out removals in “satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition.” On May 18, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini stated, “[t]he areas that people are fleeing to now do not have safe water supplies or sanitation facilities.”

The third set of provisional measures by the ICJ found that “Israel has not provided sufficient information concerning … the availability in the al-Mawasi area [where civilians from Rafah were ordered to evacuate] of water, sanitation, food, medicine and shelter.”

An employee of the CMWU told Human Rights Watch on May 30, 2024, “[u]nfortunately the situation is only getting more terrible. I don’t know how [anyone] can say that the situation is improving. How could the situation be improving if the whole population is gathered in one area… on the beach side and in the middle area governorates… [where they] can’t find water to wash themselves or to drink.”

Human Rights Watch has previously found that Israeli authorities’ displacement of the civilian population in Gaza combined with its failure to provide humanitarian safeguards in evacuation areas, and other breaches of article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention amount to multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity of forced displacement.

Violations of International Law

International humanitarian law (IHL) requires Israel, as the occupying power in Gaza, to provide for the welfare of the occupied population and ensure that the needs of the civilian population are provided for.

IHL also prohibits warring parties from attacking, destroying, removing, or rendering useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population (OIS), including water and sanitation infrastructure. When done deliberately, destruction of OIS may amount to a war crime. In several instances, Israeli forces deliberately targeted water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza, including in areas under their control. Israeli authorities have deliberately cut off electricity supplies and blocked fuel supplies into Gaza, rendering nearly all water and sanitation infrastructure useless. Israeli authorities’ intentional destruction of and rendering useless OIS therefore amounts to a war crime.

Using starvation as a method of warfare by destroying and rendering useless OIS is a war crime. Starvation includes water deprivation. Israeli authorities’ and forces’ actions of intentionally destroying and rendering useless water infrastructure essential to the survival of the civilian population in Gaza constitute the use of starvation as a method of warfare by deliberately destroying and rendering useless OIS, amounting to a war crime.

Israeli authorities’ deprivation of water to the population of Gaza is a violation of the right to water and sanitation under international human rights law.

The governing authority over a population, which includes the occupying power, has, under international human rights law, a positive, “immediate” obligation to protect the population’s right to water and to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Israeli authorities’ actions have violated the rights of Palestinians in Gaza to water and to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.

Extermination is listed as a distinct crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute). Extermination includes “the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia, the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population,” and includes the following elements: “[t]he perpetrator killed one or more persons, including by inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population; [t]he conduct constituted, or took place as part of, a mass killing of members of a civilian population; [t]he conduct was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population; and [t]he perpetrator knew that the conduct was part of or intended the conduct to be part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.”

Israeli policies have amounted to the intentional creation of conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the civilian population of Gaza. Israeli authorities were responsible for the deliberate destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure, the prevention of repairs to damaged water and sanitation infrastructure, and the cutting off or severe restrictions on water, electricity and fuel, which have likely caused thousands of deaths, that is, a mass killing, and will likely continue to cause deaths into the future. As a state policy, these acts constitute a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population. Israeli officials are therefore committing the crime against humanity of extermination.

Genocide is a crime under international law set out in both the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The crime of genocide in international law involves the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such, by killing its members or by causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; or deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; or imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Human Rights Watch concludes that Israeli authorities have over the past year intentionally inflicted on the Palestinian population in Gaza “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” This policy, inflicted as part of a mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza means Israeli authorities have committed the crime against humanity of extermination, which is ongoing. This policy also amounts to an “act of genocide” under the Genocide Convention of 1948.

The crime of genocide requires acts of genocide to be committed with genocidal intent. The ICJ has said that to infer such intent from a pattern of conduct by the state, it needs to be “the only reasonable inference to be drawn” from the acts in question. The pattern of conduct set out in this report together with statements suggesting some Israeli officials wished to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza may indicate such intent.

Direct and public incitement to genocide is also prohibited under article 3(c) of the Genocide Convention. The combination of certain public statements, including from persons in authority in Israel at the time they made the statements, calling for action that would target access to water and other conditions of life of Palestinians in Gaza; the action that followed the statements, by Israeli authorities in creating the conditions of life that have likely killed thousands of Palestinians; and the ICJ ruling on incitement, indicate that some of the statements have amounted to direct and public incitement to genocide. Israeli authorities are under a duty, as the ICJ ruled, to take all measures to prevent and punish such incitement.

These violations of international law entail both state responsibility and individual criminal liability of Israeli officials.

Key Recommendations

The Israeli government should immediately comply with the provisional measures ordered by the ICJ. It should cease its unlawful destruction of water infrastructure across Gaza and unlawful attacks on personnel and equipment needed for repairs. It should immediately lift its blockade of Gaza, restore water and electricity access, and allow desperately needed water, food, medical aid, and fuel in, including via all land crossings. The Israeli government should also immediately allow for and facilitate urgently-needed repairs to damaged water infrastructure.

States and international institutions, and especially those with leverage on the Israeli government such as the United States, the United Kingdom and European Union states, should take urgent action to prevent genocide and further atrocities. This includes measures like targeted sanctions, suspension of arms transfers and military assistance, and review of bilateral trade and political agreements, to put concrete pressure on the Israeli government to comply with the ICJ’s provisional measures and its other obligations under IHL and human rights law.

Recommendations

To the Israeli Authorities

Immediately ensure the supply of clean water, fuel, and electricity are sufficient to meet the human rights of all people in Gaza, and are adequate to ensure health and survival after prolonged deprivation of access to water.

Allow and facilitate repairs to water infrastructure and end unlawful attacks on personnel and equipment needed for repairs.

Stop obstructing humanitarian aid and civilian goods, including water, water-related infrastructure and supplies, and fuel, from entering Gaza by fully opening land crossings; publish a list of banned items; promptly provide written explanations and allow appeals of denials of entry; and ensure that humanitarian and civilian agencies can safely and regularly distribute aid to all parts of Gaza.

End all disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks and attacks targeting civilians and civilian objects, including water and sanitation infrastructure.

Avoid the use of explosive weapons that have a wide-area effect in populated areas.

Immediately process the waiting list of medical patients referred for care outside of Gaza submitted by the World Health Organization and facilitate their safe evacuations.

Lift the blockade of Gaza and permit free movement of people and goods to Gaza, subject to, at most, individual screenings and physical inspections for security purposes.

Comply with all provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.

Ensure Palestinians in Gaza have access to water at least equal to what it grants Israeli citizens and dismantle all forms of systematic domination and oppression that privilege Jewish Israelis and systematically repress Palestinians.

Withdraw the Israeli legislation preventing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, facilitate UNRWA’s and other humanitarian agencies’ activities in the Gaza Strip, and halt the campaign to destroy the UN’s most important aid agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza and elsewhere.

Cooperate with the International Criminal Court, including responding to requests for assistance and access.

Provide reparations to people in Gaza for the months-long denial of access to water, including compensation to individuals, funding and facilitation of individual and public healthcare measures as needed to recover from and prevent the spread of illness caused by denial of access to water, and funding for and facilitation of repair and restoration of water and sanitation infrastructure, ensuring accountability, and providing guarantees of non-recurrence.

Grant access to the occupied Palestinian territory to UN special procedures, independent human rights investigators, and journalists.

Implement UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions on Israel and Palestine, including all provisions relating to humanitarian aid delivery to the residents of Gaza and compliance with international humanitarian law.

To All States

Take all measures within their power to prevent genocide by Israeli authorities in Gaza by pressuring Israel to lift the blockade and comply with the orders of the International Court of Justice, including by discontinuing any military assistance and arms sales or transfers, imposing targeted sanctions, and reviewing bilateral deals and diplomatic relations.

Publicly condemn war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other violations of human rights and international humanitarian law and the genocide convention committed by the Israeli authorities, and urge them to immediately halt those violations and crimes and cooperate with international judicial bodies, investigative mechanisms, and UN special procedures.

Increase public and private pressure on the Israeli government to comply with international humanitarian law in the conduct of hostilities, and ensure the entry and safe distribution at scale throughout Gaza of adequate aid and provision of basic services.

Demand that Israel implement UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions on Israel and Palestine, including all provisions relating to humanitarian aid delivery to the residents of Gaza and compliance with international humanitarian law.

Review and possibly suspend bilateral agreements with Israel, such as the EU-Israel Association Agreement, whose review has been proposed by the Spanish and Irish governments.

End all forms of support for and complicity in the atrocities being carried out by Israel, including suspending military assistance and arms transfers to the Israeli government so long as its forces commit serious rights abuses and war crimes against Palestinian civilians with impunity.

Publicly support the ICJ’s work and its decisions as an independent judicial institution and press Israel to comply with the ICJ’s binding orders.

Publicly support the work of the International Criminal Court across all situations under its jurisdiction, including the ongoing Palestine investigation, and render any assistance necessary to give effect to orders of the Court. Uphold the court’s independence and publicly condemn efforts to intimidate or interfere with its work, officials, and those cooperating with the institution.

Support foreign domestic investigations and prosecutions under the principle of universal jurisdiction, as relevant and appropriate, of those credibly implicated in serious crimes in Gaza.

The United States should immediately reverse its decisions to suspend funding to UNRWA and state clearly the intention to continue to fund the agency, and all states should urge Israeli authorities to reverse Israel’s decisions to bar UNRWA from operating within Israel.

Fund repairs of damaged and destroyed water and sanitation infrastructure, and press Israel to urgently allow the infrastructure to be repaired.

Support the creation of an international mechanism to address reparation for Palestinians and an international register of damages.

Call on Israeli authorities to allow water filtration systems, water tanks, and other materials needed to repair water infrastructure and to improve the water supply into Gaza.

Support the United Nations to establish a plan that would ensure Palestinians have access to water at least equal to what Israel grants Israeli citizens, and pressure Israel to facilitate and contribute to the plan.

Address long-standing impunity by Israeli authorities and Palestinian armed groups for serious crimes under international law.

To the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation

Request access to Gaza in order to monitor and report publicly on the human rights situation regarding access to water and sanitation, including damage and destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure; obstruction of repairs and targeting of repair workers; restrictions on the entry of fuel; and the human rights impacts stemming from these actions.

To the International Criminal Court Prosecutor

Investigate Israeli authorities’ actions and policies that have deprived the civilian population of Gaza of water, including as war crimes, as the crime against humanity of extermination, and as genocide.

Methodology

This report is based on interviews with 66 Palestinians from Gaza, as well as 4 individuals working with Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), 31 health care professionals, and 15 individuals working with UN agencies and international aid organizations in Gaza. All interviews took place between October 18, 2023, and November 28, 2024.

Most interviews were conducted remotely, while some were conducted in person with civilians who had been evacuated out of Gaza and with nongovernmental and UN personnel. Some interviews were conducted in Arabic and were later translated to English, some interviews were conducted in English with an Arabic translator, and other interviews were conducted in English. Human Rights Watch informed all interviewees of the nature and purpose of our research and our intention to publish a report with the information gathered. We informed each potential interviewee that they were under no obligation to speak with us, that Human Rights Watch does not provide legal or other assistance, and that they could stop speaking with us or decline to answer any question with no adverse consequences. We obtained oral consent for each interview. Interviewees did not receive material compensation for speaking with Human Rights Watch. In some cases where interviewees asked not to be named or where we assessed that naming them could jeopardize their security, we have used pseudonyms and have withheld potentially identifying information.

Human Rights Watch further reviewed and analyzed photos and documents provided by the CMWU and the State of Palestine Water, Sanitation,and Hygiene Cluster (WASH) Cluster that provided details regarding the destruction of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure. Human Rights Watch analyzed this information, as well as news reports, other maps, and dozens of high- and very high-resolution satellite images captured since October 7, 2023, until August 2024 over dozens of water facilities, as well as water infrastructure details provided by other international organizations and found on social media.

Human Rights Watch analyzed and verified photographs and videos posted online of attacks across Gaza. Researchers compared visual material to satellite imagery to identify exactly where each was recorded. In some cases, Human Rights Watch reviewed and corroborated media reports and investigations which included photographs and videos found online to document findings included in this report.

Human Rights Watch also compiled and analyzed quantitative data on water access, sanitation, and other areas generated from various UN and humanitarian agencies. Data was often derived from mixed methods approaches including probability sampling, purposive sampling, and various qualitative and observational methods.

On June 10 and November 29, 2024, Human Rights Watch wrote to the Israeli military to seek further information regarding specific attacks on water and sanitation infrastructure that Human Rights Watch documents in this report, as well as information regarding the entry of water-related humanitarian aid. Israeli authorities did not reply.

The majority of the research and interviews conducted for this report took place between November 2023 and September 2024, and most of the information contained in the report is current as of September 2024.

Background

For nearly six decades, Israeli authorities have maintained overarching control over the Gaza Strip, including over the movement of people and goods, territorial waters, airspace, the infrastructure upon which Gaza relies, as well as the registry of the population. Gaza’s population, which Israel has subjected to an unlawful closure for 17 years, is almost entirely dependent on the Israeli government for access to fuel, electricity, medicine, food, potable water, and other goods and services essential to human rights. Human Rights Watch has found that the Israeli government’s prolonged closure of the Gaza Strip constitutes a form of collective punishment and is part of the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution that Israeli authorities are committing against Palestinians.

Gaza faced high levels of water scarcity before October 7, 2023, with 97 percent of groundwater, Gaza’s only natural water source, “unfit for human consumption,” as most of it is contaminated by over-pumping leading to seawater intrusion and by wastewater contamination, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in 2022. For years, tens of thousands of liters of untreated wastewater in Gaza flowed daily into the sea, contaminating the sea and impacting groundwater. The problem has worsened since October 7 due to the shutdown of wastewater treatment facilities.

About 20 percent of Gaza’s water supply came from water that the Gaza Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), a Palestinian non-governmental organization responsible for managing water and sanitation in Gaza, purchased from Israel and distributed via three pipelines controlled by the Israeli water authority, Mekorot, as well as from several water desalination facilities in Gaza. Water from the Mekorot pipelines and the desalination facilities are distributed to the population through a network of pipes. Though the Mekorot lines and desalination plants only produced a fraction of Gaza’s overall water supply, these sources provided Gaza with most of its drinking water prior to October 2023, as the remainder of Gaza’s water is largely undrinkable.

The remaining 80 percent of Gaza’s water supply came from a coastal aquifer that lies beneath Gaza, extracted from about 300 wells managed by the CMWU, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and unregulated private sector suppliers, according to the State of Palestine Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Cluster (WASH) Cluster. As noted, water from the aquifer is contaminated and unfit for human consumption.

Water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza were powered by electricity supplied by Israel prior to the hostilities and from the Gaza power plant. Gaza’s power plant became operational in 2002, but immediately before October 7, 2023, it operated at only partial capacity, partly because of several Israeli aerial attacks in prior hostilities.

Click to expand Image Map displaying the key water and wastewater infrastructure of the Gaza Strip. Data © WASH Cluster Palestine, OpenStreetMap. Graphic © Human Rights Watch.

In addition, Israeli authorities periodically restricted, sometimes punitively and other times over disputes in payments, the amount of industrial fuel they allowed Palestinians to purchase for the power plant, which the plant needs to operate. Though solar energy contributes a small amount of the needed electricity to Gaza, Israeli authorities have also restricted the entry of solar panels and batteries, hampering efforts to develop alternative energy sources that would give Gaza a degree of energy autonomy. Gaza has remained “almost completely dependent,” as the Israeli Supreme Court put it in 2008, on Israel for its supply of electricity.

The restrictions that Israeli authorities have placed on Gaza’s electricity supply, as well as on imports of parts needed for repairs, impacted the amount of water access the population had prior to the current hostilities. According to B’Tselem, an Israeli nongovernmental organization, in 2014, though 97 percent of people in Gaza were connected to the public water network, “this does not ensure a steady supply of water, as the Gaza Strip suffers from shortages of water, shortages in the electricity needed to pipe water through the system, as well as from severe problems with infrastructure,” including due to past Israeli military bombardment of Gaza. According to data from the Palestinian Water Authority, in 2021, Palestinians in Gaza consumed an average of 82.7 liters of water per day, within the World Health Organization’s minimum daily amount of 50 to 100 liters, but only one-third of Israeli water consumption.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led Palestinian armed groups breached the fences between Gaza and southern Israel and carried out an assault killing at least 815 civilians and taking 251 people as hostages. Human Rights Watch concluded that Palestinian armed groups committed numerous war crimes and the crimes against humanity of murder and unlawful imprisonment during the attack. The same day, Israeli forces began its military operations in Gaza with airstrikes and artillery shelling, and ordered the mass evacuation of all residents of northern Gaza on October 13.

Israeli forces later launched a ground invasion, concurrently with an aerial bombardment, that bisected Gaza along an east-west axis, referred to by Israeli forces as the “Netzarim Corridor” and invaded many Gaza cities including Gaza City, Khan Younis, Rafah, and Deir al-Balah. More evacuations of civilians have occurred since then in the middle and southern areas in Gaza. By September 2024, 86 percent of the Gaza Strip remained under Israeli-issued evacuation orders, internally displacing 90 percent of the population, with nowhere safe to go.

Israeli authorities have cut off essential services, including water and electricity, to Gaza’s population and blocked the entry of all but a trickle of fuel and critical humanitarian aid, acts of collective punishment that are violations of international humanitarian law and amount to war crimes, including the use of starvation as a method of warfare. As of November 14, 2024, Israeli military actions since October 2023 have resulted in the death of more than 43,000 Palestinians, injuring at least 102,000 others and reducing large parts of Gaza to rubble while damaging or destroying many of Gaza’s homes, schools, hospitals, and much of its civilian infrastructure. While many people remain missing and bodies are unidentified, nearly 59 percent of identified deaths are of children, women, or older people, according to OCHA.

I. Water Deprivation as a Deliberate Act

In the days and months after the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel, Israeli government officials made unambiguous statements about cutting off water as well as electricity and fuel, which are crucial for operating water and sanitation infrastructure, to the entire population of Gaza, and blocking humanitarian aid, including objects required for the production of potable water. The actions that Israeli authorities and military forces took in the months after October 7, 2023, were consistent with these statements, indicating a clear intent to deprive Gaza’s civilian population of water.

Israeli authorities cut all electricity and fuel to the Gaza Strip on October 7, and water on October 9. On October 9, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege” of Gaza. On October 10, then-Energy Minister and current Minister of Defense Israel Katz stated on his X account:

So far we have transferred 54,000 cubic meters of water and 2,700 megawatts of electricity to Gaza per day. It’s over. Without fuel, even the local electricity will shut down within days and the pumping wells will stop within a week. This is what he will do to a nation of murderers and butchers of children. What was will not be.

On October 11, he stated:

For years, we have provided Gaza with electricity, water, and fuel. Instead of saying thank you, they sent thousands of human animals to butcher, murder, rape and kidnap babies, women and elderly people – so we decided to cut off the supply of water, electricity and fuel, and now, their local power plant has collapsed, and there is no electricity in Gaza. We will keep holding a tight siege until the Hamas threat is lifted from Israel and the world.

On October 12, Katz asserted on X that in addition to cutting off all commercial provision of utilities and fuel to Gaza, Israel was blocking humanitarian assistance:

Humanitarian aid to Gaza? Not a switch will be flicked on, not a valve will be opened, not a fuel truck will enter until the Israeli hostages come home. Humanitarian for humanitarian. Let no one lecture us about morality.

Many Israeli officials, members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and military officers have echoed the same rationale for the Israeli government actions: the Israeli government was cutting off water, electricity, fuel, and other essential utilities and goods to Gaza’s population to pressure Palestinian armed groups to release hostages, or because doing so would help Israel to defeat Hamas.

In a post on the platform X on October 9, 2023, Major General Ghassan Alian, the head of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of the Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the unit responsible for coordinating humanitarian aid into Gaza, stated: “Hamas has become ISIS [the Islamic State], and the residents of Gaza, instead of being horrified, are celebrating. Human beasts will be dealt with accordingly. Israel has imposed a complete blockade on Gaza. There will be no electricity and no water, just destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”

On October 16, Katz said, “I am vehemently opposed to lifting the blockade and letting goods into Gaza for humanitarian reasons. Our commitment is to the families of the murdered and to the kidnapped hostages – not Hamas murderers and the people who helped them.”

On October 17, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted on X, “So long as Hamas does not release the hostages – the only thing that should enter Gaza is hundreds of tons of air force explosives – not an ounce of humanitarian aid.”

On November 4, Finance Minister and additional minister in the Ministry of Defense Bezalel Smotrich stated that no fuel must enter Gaza “under any circumstances.” He later called Israel’s war cabinet’s decision, reported on November 17, to permit small amounts of fuel to enter the strip, “a grave mistake” and said that it must “stop this scandal immediately and prevent fuel from coming into the Strip,” as reported by the Jerusalem Post.

Explaining the rationale for the decision to cut fuel supplies to Gaza, in a televised interview with CNN on November 24, Mark Regev, senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that Israel was depriving Gaza of fuel to strengthen Israel’s position when it came to negotiating with Hamas on the release of hostages. “Had we done so [allowed in fuel] … we would never have gotten our hostages out,” he said.

This rationale, which was immediately implemented, amounts to the collective punishment of the civilian population, a war crime. A party to an armed conflict cannot impose collective punishment on the civilian population – in this case Israel depriving civilians in Gaza of water and other supplies essential to their survival – to pressure the opposing warring party to act.

Furthermore, Israeli authorities were or should have been aware that cutting off water, electricity, fuel, and other essential items required for supplying water would have dire consequences for the entire population of Gaza. Israeli authorities, as the occupying power in Gaza, have for decades effectively controlled Gaza’s means of water production, including through control of electricity and fuel. United Nations humanitarian agencies, the World Bank, rights groups and others, have documented the impact of longstanding Israeli government restrictions on water, electricity, and fuel on Gaza’s population, and international donors had to negotiate for years with Israeli authorities for approvals of water infrastructure projects in Gaza, providing detailed information as to the number of people whose basic needs would be met. By calling for the cutting off and blocking of these items, Israeli authorities were calling for the population to be cut off from their means of producing water, which is essential for life.

Since the initial days of hostilities in October 2023, and particularly since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel in January 2024 to “take all measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli policymakers and politicians have made fewer statements calling for the cutting off of water, electricity, fuel, and aid, or have insisted that they are specifically at war against Hamas, and not the people of Gaza. However, Israeli authorities’ actions to deprive Palestinians in Gaza of water, electricity, fuel, and humanitarian aid have continued as of the writing of this report.

II. Cutting Off and Restricting Water, Fuel, and Electricity Supply

On October 7, 2023, Israeli authorities cut the electricity that it supplies to Gaza, and on October 9, authorities cut off all water entering Gaza through the three Mekorot pipelines.

Before the hostilities, Israeli power lines supplied up to 120 megawatts of power to the Gaza Strip and Gaza’s sole power plant produced around 70 megawatts, when the Israeli government allowed sufficient fuel imports for it to operate. The Israeli government thus retains crucial control over the Gaza Strip’s supply of electricity, which is required to operate most water and sanitation infrastructure. As of September 2024, Israeli authorities continued to block electricity to Gaza. In August, a direct electricity line to power the southern Gaza desalination plant was established, but the Israeli provider had not begun to send electricity.

In the absence of electricity from power lines, the civilian population of Gaza is largely dependent on fuel for the electricity needed for survival, including to run Gaza’s power plant, and the smaller backup or emergency diesel generators that hospitals, neighborhoods, and some water and wastewater facilities rely on. Wastewater plants had also recently turned to solar power for electricity. Fuel was also needed to produce and deliver drinking water, irrigate crops and deliver food, and for rescue efforts.

The sale and entry of fuel into Gaza is controlled by Israel. Between October 7, 2023, and the writing of this report, the Israeli government has significantly restricted the entry of fuel into Gaza. For the first five weeks of hostilities, Israeli officials blocked all fuel from entering Gaza. The power plant ran out of fuel reserves on October 11, leaving most major infrastructure, including wastewater treatment plants, desalination facilities, and hospitals without power and plunging Gaza into darkness.

After November 15, 2023, Israeli authorities began allowing in limited amounts of fuel, but they have continued to restrict the amount of fuel that has been allowed to enter. Between November 15, 2023, and August 31, 2024, an average of 80,586 liters of fuel per day were imported into Gaza—only about one-fifth of the 400,000 liters needed for “the most basic humanitarian operations each day,” according to the United Nations.

According to the State of Palestine Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Cluster (WASH) Cluster experts who spoke to Human Rights Watch, the restriction and blocking of fuel supplies has been the most significant factor in the denial of access to adequate water to the population of Gaza. In the absence of electricity, most water and wastewater facilities became inoperable once there was no fuel available to operate the back-up generators many of them are connected to.

“Taking away the power source is already hugely debilitating to the entire water and sewage system of Gaza. The very tight control of fuel going in is equivalent—it’s a huge manipulation [of the WASH infrastructure],” a WASH response actor told Human Rights Watch.

In October 2023, the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of the Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the unit responsible for coordinating humanitarian aid into Gaza, included fuel on its list of items that it prohibited the United Nations from providing as part of their humanitarian effort due to their so-called “dual use,” that is, items which have both a civilian and military purpose, a humanitarian official told Human Rights Watch, despite fuel being a vital resource to sustaining life in Gaza.

The Israeli military stated to news media in October 2023 that they were blocking fuel because militants “use fuel to propel the rockets they manufacture and fire into Israel, as well as for vehicles the fighters drive during operations.” In response to the Israeli military’s claims that Hamas was diverting aid, Refugees International, in a report published in September 2024, stated that “[t]here is a broad consensus” amongst humanitarian actors providing aid “that ongoing combat between Hamas and the IDF has disrupted aid flows, but we have found little evidence to support the allegation that Hamas is diverting humanitarian aid at a large scale.”

In February 2024, David Satterfield, the US special Middle East envoy for humanitarian issues, stated that Israeli authorities had not presented “specific evidence of diversion or theft” of UN aid. Later, in April, USAID Administrator Samantha Power said in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that USAID did “not have reports of diversion by Hamas from our partners.” She added, “Israel is not shy about presenting to us evidence of things it finds problematic, and this is not something that has come to our attention.”

Human Rights Watch has not been able to independently verify allegations of aid diversion in Gaza. The United Nations has stated that “looting” and “attacks on aid convoys” have hindered humanitarian access in Gaza. However, it has not said that this is being done by Hamas or other armed groups involved in the hostilities, but rather “armed gangs in Gaza” in some cases. In February 2024, the United Nations stated that “[t]he combination of massive displacements, high levels of vulnerability and need, and degraded security has led to incidents of looting of aid convoys and violence.”

The restrictions of fuel have severely limited humanitarian aid organizations’ ability to carry out their operations, which include delivering aid and WASH activities. On November 13, 2023, an Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) representative stated that “due to the lack of fuel, as of tomorrow the operations of receiving [aid] trucks will no longer be possible.”

On November 15, 2023, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2712, which included the essential need to provide “water, electricity, fuel, food, and medical supplies” to Gaza.

Israeli authorities also obstructed the limited fuel that enters Gaza from reaching areas in the north. According to OCHA, for the first five weeks of hostilities, “around 95 per cent (18 of 19) of missions involving the allocation of fuel and medicines to water reservoirs, water wells and health facilities in the north of Wadi Gaza have been denied access by Israeli authorities.”

In late January 2024, an employee in Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU) told Human Rights Watch that despite continuous efforts by the CMWU to send fuel to the north, Israeli authorities repeatedly denied their requests. Between December 2023 and late January 2024, “we haven’t been able to send a liter of fuel” to the north, he said, rendering water infrastructure, including wells, in the north inoperable. “I have no idea how [people in northern Gaza] are living,” he added. “Some there have their own small wells operating on solar panels, they maybe get one bottle of water from that in a whole day.”

Between February 1 and 15, 2024, Israeli authorities facilitated only two of 21 planned missions to deliver fuel to the north of the Wadi Gaza area in central Gaza, and none of the 16 planned fuel delivery or assessment missions to water and wastewater pumping stations in the north. They allowed fewer than 20 percent of planned humanitarian missions to deliver fuel and undertake assessments north of Wadi Gaza between January 1 and February 15, 2024, according to OCHA.

The entry of fuel has continued to be extremely limited, insufficient to meet the population’s needs, and has only reached some water and sanitation infrastructure. On April 20, Hossam Shabat, a journalist reporting from northern Gaza, stated on X that “[a]ll water wells in Gaza City have stopped due to running out of fuel.” On June 4, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) stated on X that “[w]ith almost no fuel available in Gaza, critical desalination plants have shut down. People don’t have near[ly] enough water… Survival is a struggle.”

As of August 2024, Israeli authorities’ denial of fuel imports remained a major impediment to water and sanitation needs. On August 7, OCHA reported that, “[t]he lack of generators and alternative energy sources, combined with the shortage of fuel and spare parts to operate existing generators, continue to severely hamper water production and sewage pumping, exposing the population to major health risks across the Gaza Strip.”

Limited Operability of Water Pipelines

According to the CMWU and the WASH Cluster, three pipelines operated by Mekorot, the Israeli national water carrier, previously provided approximately 52,800 cubic meters of water per day to Gaza, and the majority of Gaza’s drinking water.

Israeli authorities cut off all water entering Gaza through the three Mekorot pipelines between October 9 and October 31, 2023, when they reopened two of the pipelines—those serving central and southern Gaza.

The pipeline serving northern Gaza had at that point been damaged in the hostilities. Satellite imagery captured on October 9, 2023, of the area where the northernmost pipeline is believed to run, based on data from the World Bank and Ipsos, shows a large crater, indicating the use of explosive weapons in an Israeli attack. The crater was not visible on satellite imagery captured on October 7, 2023.

Following the reactivation of the southern and central lines on October 31, 2023, the line providing water to southern Gaza also sustained significant damage in the hostilities, and the supply was disrupted from December 5, 2023, until May 16, 2024, according to an employee of the CMWU and Abdul Samad, a WASH technical advisor at Oxfam. Human Rights Watch was unable to verify the cause of the damage to the southern pipeline.

According to OCHA, from October 2023 to April 2024, only the pipeline to central Gaza was operable, but between the end of October and February, it operated at less than 50 percent capacity.

In February 2024, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) provided a new water line running from Egypt into Gaza that provides 2,400 cubic meters of water per day. However, the WASH Cluster reported that on June 7, the line was “discontinued due to severe damage to the newly constructed supply line following the Israeli military ground invasion of Rafah,” which the US State Department, as well as a multitude of other actors, had warned could lead to a serious humanitarian crisis.

On March 28, 2024, the ICJ reaffirmed its January order and in a new ruling ordered Israeli authorities to provide “unhindered” and “at scale…urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements.”

One week later, on April 4, COGAT announced measures to increase drinking water to Gaza, including by refueling wells and desalination plants in northern Gaza, and repairing and re-opening the two other water pipelines.

In April, after the CMWU was able to make needed repairs, Israeli officials began allowing water to be piped in through the two Mekorot lines running to southern and northern Gaza. However they have continued to restrict the amount of water entering through the three pipelines. As a result, as of September 25, the pipelines were supplying 38,500 cubic meters of water per day, 73 percent of the pre-October 7 level. Human Rights Watch was unable to determine the reason why the Israeli authorities continued to restrict the flow of water into Gaza through the three pipelines.

An employee of the CMWU noted, however, that the improvement in potable water coming from the Mekorot lines also had little impact on the amount of water access people across Gaza have due to the immense amount of displacement and the resulting challenges in reaching people who are not in areas connected to the water network and who are not staying put in one place. As of September 2024, 86 percent of Gaza had, at some point since October, been placed under Israeli military evacuation orders, meaning Palestinians are not always able to access water lines in areas under directions to leave.

The water provided through the pipelines has also not been enough to offset Israeli authorities’ continued cutting off of electricity and restrictions on fuel used for other water-producing facilities and the water lost through damage to the pipelines. On July 1, the pipeline to northern Gaza was once again damaged in hostilities and was out of service until July 20 when CMWU workers were able to repair it and reopen it.

Between October 2023 and August 2024, the WASH cluster and UN agencies reported various estimates of average water access ranging between 2 to 9 liters per person per day, far below the 15 liters needed for survival according to international standards. This range does not provide information about specific areas or populations, nor does it describe how much of the water was suitable for drinking. In December 2023, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that recently displaced children in southern Gaza were “accessing only 1.5 to 2 litres of water each day.” According to OCHA and the CMWU, there was no access to potable water in northern Gaza between November 2023 and April 2024.

In August, the WASH cluster carried out a household survey to assess water and sanitation needs across Gaza, and found there to be a median of 16.44 liters per person per day of water. Nearly two-thirds of the assessed households reported receiving less than the six liters of water for drinking and cooking, under the nine liters per person per day recommended by international standards, and “approximately 1.4 million people face unsafe conditions when accessing sanitation facilities, despite the fact that in August OCHA reported the highest levels of water production in Gaza since the start of hostilities” The survey was unable to gather data from some areas considered to be “hard to reach.”

Click to expand Image © 2024 Human Rights Watch

Inoperable Desalination Facilities and Wells

After Gaza’s power plant ran out of fuel reserves on October 11, 2023, Gaza’s three major desalination facilities were forced to halt operations, according to a CMWU employee and to an UNRWA report. Later, in early November, after Israeli officials began allowing the UN and other relief agencies to bring small amounts of fuel into the strip, the two desalination facilities in central and southern Gaza became operational again at extremely limited capacity. On January 16, 2024, OCHA reported that they were producing a combined 2,400 cubic meters of water per day, compared with a combined 22,000 cubic meters produced by the three facilities prior to the hostilities.

There are three major desalination facilities in Gaza that desalinate saltwater, as well as dozens of smaller facilities that desalinate brackish water (from the groundwater). The facilities are critical to producing potable water to supplement the water coming through the Mekorot pipelines, which is nowhere near enough water to serve the whole population of Gaza.

Despite reports of increased entry of aid and fuel in April, the WASH Cluster reported on April 17 that the same two desalination facilities were only able to produce a combined 3,000 cubic meters of water per day. A UNICEF desalination plant in Deir al-Balah was only operating at 50 percent capacity due to lack of fuel, according to an individual working with the CMWU. On July 7, OCHA reported that the two desalination plants that were “only intermittently operational due to lack of sufficient fuel consignments” had been shut down.

There are also about 300 municipal wells throughout Gaza that provide communities with water from Gaza’s groundwater reservoir. Some of the wells have small desalination facilities linked with them to produce drinking water, but according to OCHA, the water that wells are producing is “known to be substandard given it is brackish (salty).”

In January, a CMWU employee told Human Rights Watch that the vast majority of Gaza’s 300 municipal wells were no longer functioning due to the lack of fuel and electricity. He explained that the wells previously produced about 260,000 cubic meters of water per day. “Today, we’re talking about … an estimated 160 wells [in northern Gaza] that aren’t functioning because no fuel, no electricity, and also destruction to many wells—60 percent [have been damaged or destroyed] either directly or indirectly,” he said. While the majority of the population of northern Gaza had already been forcibly displaced by Israeli forces to other areas of Gaza by January, a few hundred thousand people still remained and did not have adequate access to water.

“To bring water [from the well], we need a generator, but to have the generator work we need fuel,” said a 27-year-old man with a disability, describing his challenges in accessing water.

On January 22, OCHA reported that wells were only producing about one tenth of what they produced prior to the hostilities.

In April, the WASH Cluster reported that 40 of 300 municipal wells were operational, though this number continues to fluctuate depending on the amount of fuel that is allowed into Gaza, which remains very limited.

On May 30, an employee of the CMWU told Human Rights Watch that the number of operational wells remained very small due to the lack of fuel entering Gaza since the Israeli government had closed the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings on May 5 and 6. “A small amount [of fuel] to operate some of the [undestroyed and undamaged] wells in northern Gaza has entered,” he said. But he added that this was minimal compared to what was needed. “We’re talking about a lack of fuel which also impacts a lack of water,” he said.

On July 7, OCHA reported that “[d]ue to the lack of fuel, water production has drastically decreased, driving down public water distribution by 38 percent since early July.”

A doctor working for Gaza’s Ministry of Health stated that since the start of hostilities, these wells, which draw from groundwater largely unfit for human consumption, had become “primary sources of water” for people sheltering in and near hospitals. “All of this water is contaminated,” he said.

A journalist in southern Gaza told Human Rights Watch that he and his family, as well as the 80 displaced people sheltering with them, were getting water from “salty wells.” “The water is polluted, and people are getting sick, many people are suffering,” he said.

Compounding concerns about the salinity of well water, in December and January Israeli forces pumped seawater into tunnels beneath Gaza that the Israeli authorities said Hamas was using for military operations. Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, as well as other environmental experts, have stated that flooding tunnels with seawater could have a catastrophic impact on Gaza’s water by causing seawater to seep into Gaza’s aquifer, and even render Gaza uninhabitable. In a report issued in June 2024, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) stated that “[Gaza’s] [w]ater supplies have also been contaminated by practices and military actions including the construction, flooding and destruction of the tunnel system.”

Inoperable Wastewater Facilities and Sewage Pumping Stations

Gaza has six wastewater treatment plants and 65 sewage pumping stations.

By October 15, all of the wastewater treatment plants and most of the sewage pumping stations were forced to shut down due to the lack of fuel and electricity, which led to the overflow of sewage into the environment, including into the sea and soil, impacting the groundwater.

Wastewater treatment is both critical for replenishing the groundwater supply with fresh water, and for ensuring that sewage and untreated wastewater are not entering the environment—which can lead to the spread of diseases.

On January 11, OCHA stated that “repeated denials of fuel delivery to water and sanitation facilities, have deprived people of access to clean water, escalating the risk of sewage overflows and rapidly intensifying the spread of communicable diseases.”

On February 9, OCHA reported that flooding around Zeitoun sewage pumping station, which was damaged by Israeli attacks, posed “a potential crisis” of sewage overflow in the area around the station. “This is further compounded by fuel shortage, which impedes the operation of sewage stations,” OCHA added in the statement.

On April 29, OCHA reported that the CMWU had informed them that the wastewater treatment plant in Rafah was overflowing with sewage due to the lack of electricity and fuel to operate the facility.

On July 4, the Emergency Committee of Khan Younis Municipality in southern Gaza stated that the restrictions on fuel imports had caused the “complete crippling of services to the municipality,” including sewage pumping stations and water wells.

III. Destruction of Water and Sanitation Infrastructure

Since October 7, 2023, military operations in Gaza have resulted in the destruction of or damage to a significant amount of Gaza’s water and sewage infrastructure, including the Mekorot and UAE pipelines, wells, water treatment plants, portions of the water pipeline network, and sewage and wastewater treatment facilities.

In several cases, Human Rights Watch found that Israeli forces targeted water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure deliberately, without any apparent military objective present. As described below, in these cases, all available information indicates that the destruction was not incidental to attacks on military objects but deliberate, as Israeli ground forces were in control of the areas at the times they destroyed WASH infrastructure. Israeli forces demolished facilities in areas a few hundred meters from the Gaza/Israel perimeter, which were under Israeli military control from the early stages of the conflict.

Additional information suggests Israeli forces were not under fire or seeking a battlefield advantage over Palestinian armed groups when they destroyed water infrastructure, including the video troops posted of themselves methodically setting and wiring explosives inside a water reservoir, and satellite imagery showing military bulldozers and bulldozer tracks leading from Israeli territory to various wastewater plants, where the large solar-panel arrays powering the plants had been methodically bulldozed.

In other cases, Israeli attacks destroyed or damaged WASH infrastructure, but it was not possible to determine whether the attacks had targeted the infrastructure itself or Palestinian armed groups or other military objectives. Even in the case of a military presence, unless the infrastructure is solely being used for military purposes—which there is no evidence of—WASH infrastructure maintains its status as objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, which forces are prohibited from attacking, destroying, or rendering useless under the laws of war.

A third set of cases considered involve damage to or destruction of water infrastructure where the party responsible for the attack could not be determined.

Overall, the devastating impact of the hostilities on WASH infrastructure increases the likelihood of civilian harm in cases where Israeli forces have attacked WASH infrastructure, and the risk that such attacks were disproportionate compared with any expected military advantage.

Israeli military officials and authorities knew or should have known the devastating impact of Israeli attacks on the accessibility of water to civilians in Gaza. And yet, despite the consistent, overwhelming reporting since the escalation in October 2023 demonstrating that civilians in Gaza did not have access to adequate amounts of water for survival, Israeli forces have continued to intentionally destroy water and sanitation infrastructure, and Israeli officials have also continued to impose restrictions on water, fuel, electricity, and imports of supplies needed to repair or maintain WASH infrastructure in Gaza.

Destruction of Most Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Infrastructure in Gaza

Just four days into the hostilities, OCHA reported that “seven significant water and sewage facilities… were hit by airstrikes and severely damaged.” The facilities served over half of Gaza’s population. In the same update, OCHA also reported that, already, “sewage and solid waste [were] accumulating in the streets, posing a health hazard.”

Since that time, Israeli forces have continued to attack water and sanitation facilities, despite awareness that Gaza’s WASH system was collapsing and that water-borne illnesses were spreading. As of late January 2024, most of Gaza’s WASH infrastructure had been destroyed or damaged during the hostilities, including 87 percent of WASH facilities in Gaza governorate, 82 percent in northern Gaza, 54 percent in Deir al-Balah, and 46 percent in Khan Younis, according to the United Nations. From October 2023 to August 2024, municipalities in northern Gaza and Gaza City reported the destruction of 97 water wells, 13 major sewage pumps, 57 generators used for wells, 204 waste collection vehicles and 255,000 meters of water and sewage lines. According to the United Nations and the World Bank, this infrastructure may take decades, and hundreds of millions of dollars, to rebuild.

While it is not possible to verify the cause of all of the damage and destruction to infrastructure that has been recorded, videos and photographs, which were shared with Human Rights Watch or posted on social media and which Human Rights Watch verified, as well as analysis of satellite imagery captured over the location and around the time of many of the incidents documented by Human Rights Watch, show elements that indicate that only Israeli attacks could have caused the damage and destruction, and that at least some of the attacks were intentional, knowing this to be WASH infrastructure. These elements include large craters consistent with the use of air-dropped munitions, the razing of solar panels fields by bulldozers, and the complete destruction of buildings.

The exact coordinates of all of Gaza’s WASH infrastructure, including the CMWU warehouse and headquarters, had all been shared with Israeli authorities by an international humanitarian agency prior to the start of the hostilities, according to employees of the CMWU. One employee explained that the aim of sharing the coordinates was to “protect the facilities from targeting [by Israeli forces] during conflicts.” Several facilities, including the CMWU’s warehouse, had been confirmed by Israeli forces to UNICEF and the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA), based in Ramallah, as being deconflicted after the start of hostilities in order to ensure that Israeli forces were aware of facilities that provide essential services to civilians in Gaza and could avoid damaging them. Despite these measures, Israeli forces still attacked the CMWU’s central warehouse on January 21 and 22, 2024, damaging and destroying vast amounts of critical WASH materials.

An Oxfam analysis found that a significant portion of the infrastructure that Oxfam and its WASH partners installed or rehabilitated from 2017 to 2023 has been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023, rendering much of it inoperable. The locations of this infrastructure were deconflicted, or shared with relevant authorities to “avoid potential hazards” for humanitarian aid provision, through the appropriate channels in order to ensure that the Israeli government was aware of and could avoid damaging facilities that provide essential services to civilians in Gaza.

A separate Oxfam report found that as of February 24, Israeli forces had damaged or destroyed 12 water and sanitation projects that had been built by Oxfam and Oxfam’s partners, despite all having been deconflicted with the Israeli military in December. In the absence of valid military targets, these attacks would be unlawfully indiscriminate if not deliberate.

Israeli forces’ use of explosive weapons with wide area affects in populated areas of Gaza raises significant concerns of indiscriminate attacks in violation of the laws of war. As of mid-December 2023, reports indicated that around half of all munitions dropped on Gaza were unguided “dumb bombs.” The Israeli military has repeatedly used 2,000-pound bombs on densely populated areas in Gaza, including where wells, water networks, and other critical water and sanitation infrastructure are also located in high density.

In the context of Israeli authorities’ cutting off and restricting of water, electricity, and fuel supplies into Gaza, Israeli forces’ destruction of WASH infrastructure has significantly exacerbated the lack of access to water and sanitation across Gaza.

Deliberate Attacks on Wastewater Treatment and Sewage Facilities

Six wastewater treatment plants serve the whole of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip and are critical to maintaining a sanitary environment throughout the strip and contributing to groundwater reserves.

Of the six wastewater treatment plants, satellite imagery analysis shows that the solar panel fields of at least four plants were destroyed by Israeli military bulldozers, rendering the facilities inoperable as electricity and fuel also continue to be blocked. The extensive destruction of the solar panel fields, the presence in each case of bulldozer tracks, and the routes of these tracks coming from the Israeli border, indicate that Israeli authorities deliberately damaged the wastewater treatment plants.

The use of bulldozers to completely raze large solar panel fields also indicates that at the time they were razed, the Israeli military most probably had operational control of these areas. The razing of fields, orchards, buildings, and facilities are part of the Israeli military’s “clearing operations” notably in the buffer zone and along the corridors, when the main hostilities have ceased in the area. Daily maps of Israeli forces’ evacuation orders, clearance operations and advances, published by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) based on the Israeli military’s statements and other open-source information, corroborate these findings, and indicate that Israeli forces apparently controlled the areas where the facilities were located, often for weeks, before the dates when satellite imagery shows that the WASH facilities were destroyed.

In addition, three of the four plants where solar panels were destroyed—the North Gaza, Central Gaza (al-Bureij refugee camp), and Khan Younis wastewater treatment plants—are located less than 500 meters from the eastern border of the Gaza Strip. Israeli officials stated their intention to create a “buffer zone” covering this area, claiming that it was necessary to allow residents of communities in the south of Israel to return to their homes without fear of another attack. “[All along] the Gaza Strip…we will have a margin. And they will not be able to get in. It will be a fire zone,” Avi Dichter, Israel’s agriculture minister, told reporters on October 19. Analysis by the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) shows that by February 29, 2024, 90 percent of the buildings located less than one kilometer from the border were damaged or destroyed.

The fourth plant—the Sheikh Ejleen Wastewater Treatment Plant—that has had sections damaged and destroyed is located within the so-called Netzarim corridor in northern Gaza. The corridor, which includes a new road constructed by the Israeli military and large razed areas on either side, runs from the Israel/Gaza perimeter in the east to the sea in the west and bisects the territory into northern and southern parts. In satellite imagery from August 25, 2024, systematic destruction can be seen on both sides of the new road, where the vast majority of buildings, including individual houses, high-rise residential buildings, and universities have been destroyed.

Human Rights Watch did not find statements indicating the military intent of the destruction and damage to the four wastewater treatment plants from Israeli authorities. They did not respond to our requests for information about these incidents, including in a letter on June 10, 2024.

Intentionally attacking civilian objects is a war crime. Intentionally depriving civilians of objects indispensable to their survival, with an intention to starve them, which includes water, is also a war crime. Human Rights Watch’s research indicates that Israeli forces were aware of the nature and location of the plants and deliberately targeted the facilities.

Central Gaza Wastewater Treatment Plant

Satellite imagery reviewed by Human Rights Watch shows that, on October 10 or 11, 2023, an Israeli airstrike—indicated by the presence of three new craters of around 15 meters diameter on a road that runs alongside the plant—destroyed some of the solar panels of the Central Gaza wastewater treatment plant, located less than 500 meters from the border with Israel, east of the population center of al-Bureij refugee camp. Additional satellite imagery, alongside photographs shared by a CMWU employee, show that all the remaining solar panels powering the plant were razed between November 3 and 5, 2023, apparently by bulldozers. Satellite imagery from Nov

Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, the organization said in a landmark new report published today.

The report, ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity.

“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.

“States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.”

Over the past two months the crisis has grown particularly acute in the North Gaza governorate, where a besieged population is facing starvation, displacement and annihilation amid relentless bombardment and suffocating restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid.

“Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza. It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard.

“Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent.”

Amnesty International examined Israel’s acts in Gaza closely and in their totality, taking into account their recurrence and simultaneous occurrence, and both their immediate impact and their cumulative and mutually reinforcing consequences. The organization considered the scale and severity of the casualties and destruction over time. It also analysed public statements by officials, finding that prohibited acts were often announced or called for in the first place by high-level officials in charge of the war efforts.

“Taking into account the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and unlawful military occupation in which these acts have been committed, we could find only one reasonable conclusion: Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, whether in parallel with, or as a means to achieve, its military goal of destroying Hamas,” said Agnès Callamard.

“The atrocity crimes committed on 7 October 2023 by Hamas and other armed groups against Israelis and victims of other nationalities, including deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking, can never justify Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”

International jurisprudence recognizes that the perpetrator does not need to succeed in their attempts to destroy the protected group, either in whole or in part, for genocide to have been committed. The commission of prohibited acts with the intent to destroy the group, as such, is sufficient.

Amnesty International’s report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024. The organization interviewed 212 people, including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza, healthcare workers, conducted fieldwork and analysed an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery. It also analysed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, and official Israeli bodies. On multiple occasions, the organization shared its findings with the Israeli authorities but had received no substantive response at the time of publication.

Unprecedented scale and magnitude

Israel’s actions following Hamas’s deadly attacks on 7 October 2023 have brought Gaza’s population to the brink of collapse. Its brutal military offensive had killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, including over 13,300 children, and injured over 97,000 more, by 7 October 2024, many of them in direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families. It has caused unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, levelling entire cities and destroying critical infrastructure, agricultural land and cultural and religious sites. It thereby rendered large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable.

Mohammed, who fled with his family from Gaza City to Rafah in March 2024 and was displaced again in May 2024, described their struggle to survive in horrifying conditions:

“Here in Deir al-Balah, it’s like an apocalypse… You have to protect your children from insects, from the heat, and there is no clean water, no toilets, all while the bombing never stops. You feel like you are subhuman here.”

Israel imposed conditions of life in Gaza that created a deadly mixture of malnutrition, hunger and diseases, and exposed Palestinians to a slow, calculated death. Israel also subjected hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza to incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment.

Viewed in isolation, some of the acts investigated by Amnesty International constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law. But in looking at the broader picture of Israel’s military campaign and the cumulative impact of its policies and acts, genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion.

Intent to destroy

To establish Israel’s specific intent to physically destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as such, Amnesty International analysed the overall pattern of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, reviewed dehumanizing and genocidal statements by Israeli government and military officials, particularly those at the highest levels, and considered the context of Israel’s system of apartheid, its inhumane blockade of Gaza and the unlawful 57-year-old military occupation of the Palestinian territory.

Before reaching its conclusion, Amnesty International examined Israel’s claims that its military lawfully targeted Hamas and other armed groups throughout Gaza, and that the resulting unprecedented destruction and denial of aid were the outcome of unlawful conduct by Hamas and other armed groups, such as locating fighters among the civilian population or the diversion of aid. The organization concluded these claims are not credible. The presence of Hamas fighters near or within a densely populated area does not absolve Israel from its obligations to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks. Its research found Israel repeatedly failed to do so, committing multiple crimes under international law for which there can be no justification based on Hamas’s actions. Amnesty International also found no evidence that the diversion of aid could explain Israel’s extreme and deliberate restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid.

In its analysis, the organization also considered alternative arguments such as ones that Israel was acting recklessly or that it simply wanted to destroy Hamas and did not care if it needed to destroy Palestinians in the process, demonstrating a callous disregard for their lives rather than genocidal intent.

Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now. Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International

However, regardless of whether Israel sees the destruction of Palestinians as instrumental to destroying Hamas or as an acceptable by-product of this goal, this view of Palestinians as disposable and not worthy of consideration is in itself evidence of genocidal intent.

Many of the unlawful acts documented by Amnesty International were preceded by officials urging their implementation. The organization reviewed 102 statements that were issued by Israeli government and military officials and others between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024 and dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them.

Of these, Amnesty International identified 22 statements made by senior officials in charge of managing the offensive that appeared to call for, or justify, genocidal acts, providing direct evidence of genocidal intent. This language was frequently replicated, including by Israeli soldiers on the ground, as evidenced by audiovisual content verified by Amnesty International showing soldiers making calls to “erase” Gaza or to make it uninhabitable, and celebrating the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities.

Killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm

Amnesty International documented the genocidal acts of killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinians in Gaza by reviewing the results of investigations it conducted into 15 air strikes between 7 October 2023 and 20 April 2024 that killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of others. Amnesty International found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.

In one illustrative case, on 20 April 2024, an Israeli air strike destroyed the Abdelal family house in the Al-Jneinah neighbourhood in eastern Rafah, killing three generations of Palestinians, including 16 children, while they were sleeping.

While these represent just a fraction of Israel’s aerial attacks, they are indicative of a broader pattern of repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects or deliberately indiscriminate attacks. The attacks were also conducted in ways designed to cause a very high number of fatalities and injuries among the civilian population.

Inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction

The report documents how Israel deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Palestinians in Gaza intended to lead, over time, to their destruction. These conditions were imposed through three simultaneous patterns that repeatedly compounded the effect of each other’s devastating impacts: damage to and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure and other objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population; the repeated use of sweeping, arbitrary and confusing mass “evacuation” orders to forcibly displace almost all of Gaza’s population; and the denial and obstruction of the delivery of essential services, humanitarian assistance and other life-saving supplies into and within Gaza.

After 7 October 2023, Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza cutting off electricity, water and fuel. In the nine months reviewed for this report, Israel maintained a suffocating, unlawful blockade, tightly controlled access to energy sources, failed to facilitate meaningful humanitarian access within Gaza, and obstructed the import and delivery of life-saving goods and humanitarian aid, particularly to areas north of Wadi Gaza. They thereby exacerbated an already existing humanitarian crisis. This, combined with the extensive damage to Gaza’s homes, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities and agricultural land, and mass forced displacement, caused catastrophic levels of hunger and led to the spread of diseases at alarming rates. The impact was especially harsh on young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women, with anticipated long-term consequences for their health.

The international community’s seismic, shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza, by first delaying calls for a ceasefire and then continuing arms transfers, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience. Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International

Time and again, Israel had the chance to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, yet for over a year it has repeatedly refused to take steps blatantly within its power to do so, such as opening sufficient access points to Gaza or lifting tight restrictions on what could enter the Strip or their obstruction of aid deliveries within Gaza while the situation has grown progressively worse.

Through its repeated “evacuation” orders Israel displaced nearly 1.9 million Palestinians – 90% of Gaza’s population – into ever-shrinking, unsafe pockets of land under inhumane conditions, some of them up to 10 times. These multiple waves of forced displacement left many jobless and deeply traumatized, especially since some 70% of Gaza’s residents are refugees or descendants of refugees whose towns and villages were ethnically cleansed by Israel during the 1948 Nakba.

Despite conditions quickly becoming unfit for human life, Israeli authorities refused to consider measures that would have protected displaced civilians and ensured their basic needs were met, showing that their actions were deliberate.

They refused to allow those displaced to return to their homes in northern Gaza or relocate temporarily to other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory or Israel, continuing to deny many Palestinians their right to return under international law to areas they were displaced from in 1948. They did so knowing that there was nowhere safe for Palestinians in Gaza to flee to.

Accountability for genocide

“The international community’s seismic, shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza, by first delaying calls for a ceasefire and then continuing arms transfers, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience,” said Agnès Callamard.

“Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, which was enabled by decades of impunity for Israel’s violations of international law. States need to move beyond mere expressions of regret or dismay and take strong and sustained international action, however uncomfortable a finding of genocide may be for some of Israel’s allies.

“The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued last month offer real hope of long-overdue justice for victims. States must demonstrate their respect for the court’s decision and for universal international law principles by arresting and handing over those wanted by the ICC.

“We are calling on the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to urgently consider adding genocide to the list of crimes it is investigating and for all states to use every legal avenue to bring perpetrators to justice. No one should be allowed to commit genocide and remain unpunished.”

Amnesty International is also calling for all civilian hostages to be released unconditionally and for Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups responsible for the crimes committed on 7 October to be held to account.

The organization is also calling for the UN Security Council to impose targeted sanctions against Israeli and Hamas officials most implicated in crimes under international law.

Background

On 7 October 2023 Hamas and other armed groups indiscriminately fired rockets into southern Israel and carried out deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking there, killing 1,200 people, including over 800 civilians, and abducted 223 civilians and captured 27 soldiers. The crimes perpetrated by Hamas and other armed groups during this attack will be the focus of a forthcoming Amnesty International report.

Since October 2023, Amnesty International has conducted in-depth investigations into the multiple violations and crimes under international law committed by Israeli forces, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects and deliberately indiscriminate attacks killing hundreds of civilians, as well as other unlawful attacks on and collective punishment of the civilian population. The organization has called on the Office of the ICC Prosecutor to expedite its investigation into the situation in the State of Palestine and is campaigning for an immediate ceasefire.

For the Hebrew translation of this press release, click here.