Israeli attacks on Palestinian water supplies in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip accounted for a quarter of all water-related violence in 2023, while armed conflicts over dwindling resources increased worldwide, new research shows.

According to the Pacific Institute, a California-based nonpartisan think tank that studies water violence, nearly 350 water conflicts were documented worldwide in 2023, a 50% increase from 2022, which was also a record year. The violence included attacks on dams, pipelines, wells, sewage treatment plants and workers, as well as public unrest and disputes over access to water and the use of water as a weapon of war.

Overall, water-related violence has been steadily increasing since 2000. However, it has increased in recent years as the climate crisis and increasing water scarcity exacerbate old conflicts over land, ideology and religion, economics and sovereignty, and new conflicts erupt, according to the Water Conflict Chronology. In 2000, the tracker documented only 20 water conflicts.

Among the regions with the greatest increase in water violence are Latin America and the Caribbean, a region affected by drought and unequal access to water resources. There, the number of incidents increased more than threefold compared to the previous year, to 48 in 2023. In Bolívar, Colombia, police used gunfire and tear gas to disperse residents’ protests against a 10-day water outage, injuring four people.

Meanwhile, in India, severe droughts and social disputes over access to water for agricultural irrigation led to a 150 percent increase in water conflicts last year, with 25 incidents occurring, including clashes between communities in the neighboring southern states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka over the Cauvery river.

“All of these cases highlight different aspects of the growing water crisis: the failure to enforce and comply with international law; the failure to provide clean water and sanitation for all; and the growing threat of climate change and severe droughts,” said Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute., an independent research and policy organization that produced the Conflict Tracker in 1985.

“In 2023, there was a massive increase in violence over water around the world, but especially in the Middle East.”

Water conflicts in the Middle East accounted for 38 percent of total conflicts last year, largely caused by attacks on Palestinian water supplies and infrastructure in the occupied territories, according to the tracker, which monitors news reports, eyewitness accounts, UN reports and other conflict databases.

Israeli settlers and/or forces intentionally contaminated and destroyed water wells, pumps and irrigation systems on 90 occasions in 2023 – the equivalent of more than seven water-related acts of violence per month.

The water situation in Gaza was already catastrophic before Israel began its war in retaliation for the deadly Hamas attack on October 7. In the following period, large parts of the Gaza Strip’s water and sewage infrastructure were destroyed, damaged or rendered unusable.

In November, Israeli airstrikes partially destroyed solar panels and other infrastructure that supplied energy to the EU-backed Gaza Central sewage treatment plant, which serves a million people. In another attack, the Israeli military began pumping seawater into Hamas’ tunnel complex in an attempt to destroy the secret transport and communications system. The action risked “destroying basic living conditions in Gaza” – an element of the crime of genocide, a senior hydrologist told the Guardian in December.

In the West Bank, violence over water resources appears to be largely linked to Israeli annexation and settlement, which the International Court of Justice declared illegal in a landmark opinion.

In one documented case in September, Israeli settlers from Shaarei Tikva reportedly pumped sewage onto Palestinian farmland east of Qalqilya, causing damage to olive trees and crops. In another case in November, Israeli settlers reportedly destroyed houses, a school’s water tanks and a water pipeline, and uprooted dozens of young olive trees in the occupied city of Hebron.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has rejected the ICJ ruling as “fundamentally wrong” and one-sided. The government has been asked for a statement.

Meanwhile, the number of water-related attacks in the Russia-Ukraine war fell by 26% compared to 2022, but remained high with 32 incidents reported. These included the blowing up of a dam on the Mokri Jaly River by Russian forces in mid-June 2023, causing flooding on both banks, ostensibly to slow down a Ukrainian counteroffensive. In September, power lines and a water pipeline were damaged by shelling by Ukrainian forces in Gordeyevka, Kursk.

“The sharp increase in these incidents is a sign that too little is being done to ensure equitable access to clean and sufficient water. It underscores the devastating impact that war and violence have on civilians and critical water infrastructure,” said Morgan Shimabuku, senior researcher at the Pacific Institute.

“The new analysis shows that climate change is exacerbating an already fragile political situation by making access to clean water more uncertain in conflict areas around the world.”