Stop The Wall

A Thread 🧵 Weaponising Water: Meet Mekorot – an Israeli private company that profits from selling stolen water back to Palestinian communities.  Mekorot is an Israeli state-owned water company established in 1937. Since 1967, Israel has prohibited Palestinian communities from building water infrastructure without military permission, and according to the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network, Mekorot works closely with the Israeli army in confiscating irrigation pipes from the West Bank. According to TRT, Mekorot profits are generated from selling stolen water back to Palestinians at rates 10x higher than those charged to Israeli corporations. Illegal Israeli settlers consume around 200 L of water per day. Palestinians are restricted to less than the minimum level – amounting to 84.5 L.  In the Netherlands, the water company Vitens announced in 2013 that it would end relations with Mekorot after consulting with the Dutch foreign ministry.  EPAL—the company that provides water to the city of Lisbon, Portugal—likewise ended a technology exchange deal over Mekorot’s actions in the Palestinian territories in the following year (2014). Despite that, “Mekorot is already active in Bahrain and the Kingdom of Jordan, and the company heads intend to continue to develop its consulting and planning services to various countries, with the understanding that the climate crisis and the water shortage will accompany the various countries for many years to come,” according to Mekorot Chairman Yitzhak Aharonovich. Mekorot has been weapnising water from the 20th - 21st Century. For 100 days in 2025, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank town of Idna have been surviving without running water after Mekorot cut the supply of water from 32,000 cubic metres to 26,000.