Al-Hadidiya is a small Bedouin community in Palestine’s Israeli-occupied northern Jordan Valley, northwest of Jericho. It stands as a powerful symbol of Palestinian resilience in the face of Israel’s deliberate and systematic campaign to dispossess and expel its people. Despite being surrounded by abundant natural water resources, the forces of Israel’s military occupation deny al-Hadidiya residents equitable and sustainable access to, use of, and management of nearby wells and springs. Instead, Israel forces them to buy water brought in by tankers at exorbitant prices, while Israel’s “national” (i.e., Jewish only) Mekorot corporation supplies the same water freely and abundantly to nearby Israeli settler colonies. Mekorot and the Israeli army enforce this injustice under Mekorot’s apartheid-chartered purpose of serving only persons of “Jewish race and descent.” Thus, Mekorot plays the central role in implementing what is widely condemned as “water apartheid.”
Like its apartheid sister institutions (World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency, Jewish National Fund and Histadrut) that manage Palestine’s housing and urban development, land and human resources, respectively, Mekorot controls Palestine’s water resources and infrastructure. It extracts and selectively distributes over 1.5 billion cubic meters for Israel’s colonial settlers. Meanwhile, Palestinians, like the people of al-Hadidiya, often survive on less than 20 liters of water per day, far below the international minimum standard. The community’s struggle is not an isolated case.
Mekorot’s behavior reflects a broader Israeli policy of controlling all essential natural and human resources to expel Palestinians off their land, particularly in Area C of the West Bank, where Israel maintains full control. This follows the pattern established inside the majority portion of historic Palestine colonized through genocide and ethnic cleansing since 1948 and unilaterally claimed as the State of Israel.
Since Israel’s 1967 conquest of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and Syrian Golan by force, Israel’s military orders have replaced existing laws—despite international law (The Hague Regulations of 1907) prohibiting occupiers altering the legal system in occupied territories—to block Palestinian water-sector development, violating human rights and international criminal and humanitarian law.
Palestinian Environmental NGO Network/Friends of the Earth (PENGON-FoE) has recently produced a documentary that captures the stark contrast between deprivation and abundance under the Zionist state and its occupation of Palestinian territory. In this film, residents give firsthand testimony about living under constant threatened and actual water cuts, and the forces of displacement. Like Israel denial of Palestinians’ other means of subsistence, including food, water, medical treatment and other essentials of life to the entire Gaza Strip, Mekorot and its affiliates create a matrix of water deprivation against the Indigenous Palestinian People as a whole.
The voices from al-Hadidiya recount the Palestinian People’s experience under a century of colonization and expose the devastating impact of Mekorot’s systematic and materially discriminatory policies and affirm the community’s deep and organic connection to their land and way of life.
Despite the colonists’ onslaught, al-Hadidiya endures with the steadfastness of Indigenous Peoples colonized elsewhere. Against immense odds, the village’s residents refuse to leave, defending their right to remain and live with their inherent dignity. Their resistance has become a rallying point for global solidarity, while their resilience against such assaults should never demanded of them.
Al-Hadidiya’s story is not just about water—it is about all principles and forms of justice, survival, and resistance. In the face of violent plunder and apartheid, the people of al-Hadidiya continue to assert their existence on their land and to the most basic of human needs and, therefore, human rights: water.
Watch the documentary here.
Photo: Scene from the film, showing grazing areas with Israeli army-planted land mines that prevent al-Hadidiya’s residents from water sources. Source: PENGON FOE.
