Apartheid Israeli water tech is not the solution to South Africa’s water crisis!

15 August 2022

The End Water Apartheid campaign strongly condemns Jewish National Fund (JNF) sponsored meetings last Thursday and Friday and arrangements between elected municipal officers, officials and an Israeli delegation of so-called ‘water experts.’  The DA Mayor of Tshwane, Randall Williams, MMC Sun of City of Joburg and their colleagues must be denounced for complicity with an apartheid state promulgating the myth that buying Israeli water technology will ‘solve’ our water crisis.  

The JNF, established with the sole purpose of acquiring land for Jewish settlers, is notorious for greenwashing - planting trees to erase all trace of Palestinian villages.  Through its subsidiaries, the JNF is currently evicting Palestinians from their land in the Naqab, the West Bank and Jerusalem to expand illegal Israeli settlements.  

Israel and its water corporations weaponise water in an attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. As they battle for water on the ground, Palestinians have repeatedly called on the world to stop financing this water apartheid, to boycott Israel’s water companies and refuse to greenwash Israeli crimes.  Already in 2009, Amnesty International published a report that examined how Israel has stolen Palestinian water sources and restricts access to water for Palestinians while the JNF boasts of building dams and reservoirs that only serve Jewish Israelis, including their military bases.

Israel’s water apartheid is by definition opposed to any policy and vision that promotes justice, equality and water as a human right.  Its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights gives Israel control over a major water source.  In Gaza, under siege by Israel for 15 years, 97% of the water is undrinkable.  The 2.048 million people living in this open air prison were this month bombed yet again by Israel, killing 49 people including 17 children and further damaging water, sanitation and other infrastructure.  In the occupied West Bank the Jordan River is being drained dry - it is estimated that the over 600,000 illegal Israeli settlers consume three to eight times more water than the 2.8 million Palestinians living under violent occupation.  

NMB Water Crisis Committee member, Siyabulela Mama, commented: “We are not fooled by Israeli propaganda – we know that Israel is not a world water leader - it depends on water stolen from the Palestinian people, driving them off their own land to expand its colonial project. This is water apartheid, part of the global politics of water privatization and water theft where water is for the few and for profit.” 

Every cent that goes to Israel’s water corporations, such as Watergen, active in Nelson Mandela Bay, fuels Israeli apartheid in Palestine and destroys our water security.  Watergen, in its glossy PR brochures, claims that its technology produces water from the atmosphere but is known to many in the industry for providing nothing more than an over-priced air conditioner on a truck.   

According to an Africa Water Commons Collective activist “The principle of atmospheric water generation (AWG) is not an Israeli invention. It has been known to indigenous communities since time immemorial.  We should rather be funding local tech development and production that is cost effective and creates jobs, not buying capital intensive Israeli tech that can’t address the right to water for all in our country”.  

Water should be provided in a sustainable way and in quantities that people can live on.  For a start, South African municipalities must address the mismanagement, corruption and years of degradation of our existing water infrastructure that wastes hundreds of gallons of water a day through leaks and breakdowns.  

The End Water Apartheid campaign:

Calls on local, provincial and national governments as well as trade unions and community organisations to heed the Palestinian call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against apartheid Israel.  

Demands that the DA ends its complicity with apartheid Israel and that ANC municipalities, MMCs, local councilors and officials act on ANC statements of support for the Palestinian struggle by exposing and rejecting Israel’s water apartheid as a solution to our water crisis.

Calls on all communities in South Africa to stand up together for a water commons, against profits flowing towards Israel’s colonial and apartheid regime based on oppression and resource theft and against the corporate scramble for South Africa and our continent’s water resources.

Issued by Roshan Dadoo, SA BDS Coalition, 15 August 2022