How Israel is destroying Lebanon’s water infrastructure

“Israel has declared its intent on raising [towns and villages] to the ground and preventing people from going back there,” Rami Zurayk, professor and chairperson of the Department of Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, American University of Beirut, told Al Jazeera. “Every drop of water that Israel steals is a drop of the water that is taken from the local population … Israel uses water in order to displace people, and it displaces people in order to steal the water.”

Israel damaged six water facilities in southern Lebanon during previous attacks on Lebanon since 2023, and in the first four days of the renewed conflict this year, “damaged at least seven critical water sources including reservoirs, pipe networks and pumping stations that supplied water to almost 7,000 people in the Bekaa area alone”, according to Oxfam International. Key infrastructure has been damaged in areas like Britel and Nabi Chit in the Bekaa Valley, and in Marjayoun, in southern Lebanon.

Lebanon’s water infrastructure is being “directly and indirectly attacked and on purpose”, asserted Nadim Farajalla, an environmental engineer and chief sustainability officer at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. “We saw it in 2024 and now in 2026.”

The indirect attacks hit things such as the electricity infrastructure, so that pumping stations cannot work to move water or sewage. The direct attacks have hit the pumping stations, as well as municipal workers operating water wells.

The aim behind these attacks is “to force people to leave”, Farajalla said. “Without electricity, you can stay in the dark and cook with gas, but without water, how will you live?”

Israel has denied that its attacks are a deliberate attempt to weaponise access to water, instead framing its operations as necessary for national security.

Burden of war on water

Even before the war, the Lebanese state had failed to deliver a number of basic services, including the supply of water, to its population for decades.

“The water supply situation in Lebanon must be understood against a backdrop of pre-existing vulnerabilities that have been exacerbated by recent hostilities and the ongoing economic crisis,” Imad Chiri, International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) water and habitat coordinator, told Al Jazeera.

Southern Lebanon, like many of the country’s peripheries, has been particularly neglected by the state. In October 2025, the ICRC conducted a water insecurity study in southern Lebanon’s Bint Jbeil and Marjayoun districts. Chiri explained that 91 percent of households were found to be experiencing moderate-to-high water insecurity – insufficient to meet daily needs. For 57 percent of households, the situation was bad enough for them to be classified as highly water insecure.

During times of conflict, water infrastructure comes under even more pressure, particularly for areas hosting displaced people. And even basic damage to water infrastructure can lead to compounding difficulties.

“There are two issues at hand that you have to be aware of,” Farajalla said. “There are attacks on infrastructure, and there is the burden on infrastructure due to displacement.”

“Water sources and networks are often located in frontline or high-risk zones, yet they continue to supply populations who have chosen to remain,” Chiri said. “Identifying contractors willing to operate under such conditions is already challenging. Even when they agree, operations require meticulous planning, limited time on site, and continuous adaptation to a highly volatile security environment.”

Water as a weapon

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) “obliges parties to a conflict to take constant care to spare water resources and water infrastructure,” Tadesse Kebebew, a legal researcher and project manager at the Geneva Water Hub, wrote for the ICRC in 2025.

Israel ratified the Geneva Convention – the basis for IHL – in 1951. But Zurayk said that “Israel has never paid attention to any of those conventions.”

In Gaza, for example, Israel controls Palestinians’ access to water. Israel has impeded Palestinians’ access to water in the West Bank, too.

“The use of water as a weapon has also been going on in Lebanon for a long time,” Zurayk said, citing Lebanon’s accusation that Israel had obstructed access to water from the Wazzani River, which crosses the Blue Line that separates Lebanese and Israeli territory, including the bombing of pumping stations.

And destroying Lebanon’s already insufficient water infrastructure directly contributes to illness and death.

“Not only is this about destroying access to water, it’s actually inducing waterborne diseases, the highest cause of infant mortality in developing countries, and inducing this in the population,” Zurayk said. “So it’s an indirect biological weapon. It is a chemical weapon because instead of dousing, which Israel has done, the region with the harmful chemicals, what you do is you withdraw an essential chemical.”

Still, Israel has never been held accountable.

“The international community stood by in Gaza and watched Israel’s weaponisation of water and its catastrophic consequences to men, women and children there,” Ayoub said in the Oxfam report from March. “The same devastation must not be allowed to play out again in Lebanon. Israel must be held to account for its violations and must not be allowed to occupy more land, deny more civilians of their basic rights, and continue to abuse international law without consequence.”