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IN THE MIDDLE East, water is more than a resource. Water is a source of power, and in many cases, a weapon of war. The Gaza Strip is the most urgent and devastating example.

The survival of Ahmad (whose last name we have withheld for security reasons), like hundreds of thousands of others in Gaza, depends on gaining access to basic humanitarian resources, especially water.

“Sometimes a water truck comes to our area, so we fill some gallons. When it doesn’t, we’re forced to drink regular water,” Ahmad told us and our colleagues at Churches for Middle East Peace over WhatsApp in July. The “regular water” he refers to is untreated groundwater pulled from local wells, risky to consume even before the most recent war. “My body didn’t take it. I got very sick,” he told us. “But we had no other option.”

Ahmad is a creative tech professional from Gaza City who we began speaking with in 2023. Before the war started, he and his fiancé, both in their early 30s, were planning to be married and start their new life together. Israel Defense Forces destroyed Ahmad’s newly built home in the first week of war. The art studio he helped create was reduced to rubble. Later soldiers raided his parent’s house, handcuffed Ahmad and his family, and marched them barefoot through the cold. “They stole everything — money, gold, devices,” Ahmad said. “It was 3 a.m.”

Ahmad has spent the last two years trapped in a collapsing world. “We’ve been displaced more than 15 times,” he said. “I’ve lived in 10 different houses. Every move means deciding what little to carry — and fearing what might come next.”

‘Let justice roll down like waters’ 

AMID THE CONTINUED Israeli military offensive following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel, the United Nations has warned that the water crisis in Gaza is at a breaking point. In late June, according to a U.N. report, only 40% of drinking water facilities were functional, more than a quarter of the wells were contaminated, and fuel shortages pushed water systems to near collapse. Desperate Gazans are giving their children seawater to drink, resulting in pediatric kidney ailments. They are commandeering trucks delivering clean water.

The Bible is full of references to water. Water is a source of life. The prophet Amos reminds us that God thirsts for justice, not empty sacrifice: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (5:24). Jesus offers “living water” to the Samaritan woman at the well. “Whoever drinks the water I give them, will never thirst,” he says (John 4:14). Water is life. Without water, the body and the soul of the people die.

Pastor Hanna Massad, a Palestinian Christian and former leader of Gaza Baptist Church, knows these realities intimately. Though now living outside Gaza, Massad remains deeply connected to the Christian community still sheltering in damaged churches and homes. “The Baptist church has been badly damaged. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to use it again,” he told us in a Zoom interview this summer. Most Christians now shelter at the Latin or Orthodox churches where resources are thin. “The Latin church is only able to provide two hot meals each week,” Massad said. On July 17, this church, Holy Family Parish (Catholic) Church, was shelled by the Israeli military, killing three people, injuring several others — including Gabriel Romanelli, the parish priest — and damaging the compound where hundreds of Palestinians have been sheltering.

Massad is also founder and president of Christian Mission to Gaza. This ministry has served thousands of hot meals to Christians and Muslims in Gaza. “We want to reflect Christ’s love,” Massad said. At a meal distribution in May, the CM2G team handed out 2,000 packets of rice (16 ounces each) wrapped in aluminum foil. But “we couldn’t offer water,” Massad said. The line quickly devolved into chaos as desperation surged. “When people are so thirsty and hungry, they might try to attack the kitchen. We ask God to protect the project.” Severe dehydration can cause confusion, muscle cramps, kidney failure, and, in children, irreversible developmental damage. In Gaza, this is not hypothetical. Gazans are dying of thirst.

The wider water war 

IN WAR ZONES across the Middle East, water infrastructure is routinely damaged or destroyed. During the civil war in Syria, critical water-related sites were repeatedly targeted by all sides — including the strategic Ain al-Fijah spring, a major supply of water to Damascus. In Yemen, combatants attacked wells and water infrastructure, worsening what the United Nations identified as one the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

In many areas, access to clean water is determined as much by politics and control as by climate. In the occupied West Bank, Israel’s national water utility, Mekorot, controls groundwater supplies and prioritizes Israeli settlements, while neighboring Palestinian communities routinely face severe water restrictions. Local Palestinian human rights groups such as Al-Haq document the systematic expropriation of Palestinian springs and the unequal allocation of water as evidence of what they call “water apartheid.”

In Jordan, one of the most water-scarce nations in the world, the Lower Jordan River has dwindled to a shocking 2% of its historical flow due to large-scale water diversions upstream, especially from Israel diverting Sea of Galilee water to supply central and southern Israel. As a result, Jordan now depends heavily on Israel for its water supply — a reliance that underscores the region’s asymmetric dependencies.

In Iran, where decades of over-extraction and mismanagement have dried up rivers and drained aquifers, water is a source of significant public frustration. Residents have protested against government elites and the Revolutionary Guard, accusing them of operating a “water mafia” that prioritizes industrial use and political loyalty over public need.

As global climate change intensifies and natural water sources diminish, countries who can afford it are investing in large-scale desalination projects. Israel is the top example, leading the region in desalination capacity and water export infrastructure. Indeed, Israel’s control of regional water is a form of hegemony — leveraging access to water in ways that consolidate power and influence diplomacy. Meanwhile, countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq struggle with aging infrastructure, economic dependence, and growing vulnerability.

So, Gaza’s thirst is not an isolated tragedy. It exemplifies how deeply embedded water injustice is in the region’s political and environmental systems. The story of water in the Middle East is a story of power — who holds it, who wields it, and who is left to thirst.

Not scarcity, but by design

THE FORCED COLLAPSE of Gaza’s water system began almost immediately after the Oct. 7 attack. Within days, Israel cut off all water pipelines to the territory — severing access to a major source of clean water — and launched airstrikes that destroyed wells, reservoirs, and pumping stations. As bombs fell and power supplies faltered, sewage systems began to overflow into streets and neighborhoods.

With virtually no electricity or maintenance crews able to operate safely, sanitation networks failed just as the need for them became most acute. By December 2023, displaced children in the Gaza Strip only had access to 1.5 to 2 liters of water per day. Three liters of water per day is the minimum required to live. In January 2025, the International Court of Justice issued provisional measures calling on Israel to ensure access to humanitarian aid in Gaza, explicitly naming water and food. By March 2025, UNICEF reported only one in 10 people had access to safe drinking water.

Israel’s restriction of fuel imports further accelerated the crisis. Without fuel, Gaza’s desalination plants and wastewater treatment systems ground to a halt. Families began relying on unsafe alternatives — brackish groundwater from private wells, collected rainwater, seawater, or, when available, expensive tanker deliveries. But, as Ahmad described, even those sources came with risk: untreated water led to widespread illness and dehydration.

In July, The Times of Israel reported that a five-month blockade of fuel brought the generators in Gaza to “a sputtering halt,” threatening not only the functioning of the desalination plants and water pumps, but also the few remaining hospitals.

The near complete blockade by Israel on water in Gaza is illegal. During times of conflict, international law prohibits the use of starvation and denial of essential resources as weapons of war. The Rome Statute classifies such actions as war crimes when they intentionally deprive civilians of “objects indispensable to their survival.”

While Gaza has long faced environmental and infrastructural challenges, the events of the past year suggest systematic choices made by Israel to put water dangerously out of reach for nearly everyone.

The church’s responsibility 

FOR THE PROPHETS of the Hebrew scriptures, water is a metaphor for what God desires most: not performative religion or political power, but a society where everyone is nourished, restored, and treated with dignity. Justice, in this vision, does not trickle; instead, justice flows like a mighty torrent. It saturates. It sustains. But in Gaza today, this metaphor is hollow. How can “justice roll down like waters” when water itself is under siege?

The Bible is filled with images of water as a sign of divine generosity and healing. From springs in the wilderness to rivers in New Jerusalem, scripture consistently links water with life, wholeness, and right relationship. To share water is to fulfill a basic law of love; to deny water is to forget the very nature of God. In the biblical imagination, water is not a bargaining chip — it is a sacred trust, divinely given to creation for the flourishing of all.

At Churches for Middle East Peace, we have chronicled Gaza’s water collapse daily since Oct. 7, 2023. Through social media and advocacy briefings, we have documented the destruction of infrastructure, the agony of water rationing, and the spiritual disfigurement caused by collective punishment. A Palestinian head of a development agency in Gaza told us in June, “People are desperate, famine and starvation everywhere.” The director continued, “The indignities are relentless: sharing latrines with strangers, waiting for hours to relieve oneself, avoiding eye contact to spare any further shame. The worst form of humiliation? Accepting these conditions as normal while fearing what degradation comes next.”

In a world parched with injustice, silence from the church becomes a form of complicity. While humanitarian groups, medical workers, and journalists sound the alarm about Gaza’s water crisis, much of the U.S. church remains silent. Some Christians even justify Gaza’s suffering through misguided interpretations of scripture and align themselves with ideologies of conquest and exclusion rather than the gospel of mercy and justice.

But let us be clear, Jesus offers no such loopholes. “I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink,” he says in Matthew 25:35 — linking care for the vulnerable with fidelity to himself. Water is not a luxury, but a human right and theological imperative. When the church fails to respond to the literal thirst of our neighbors, it is not just a moral lapse — it is a spiritual crisis.

Ahmad is thirsty 

SINCE WE SPOKE with Ahmad in June, the cycle of displacement for him has worsened. His family has been uprooted three more times — first from their home in eastern Gaza, then from his grandfather’s house, then again from his uncle’s apartment. “Now we’re staying in a burned-out flat in western Gaza,” he told us. “We sealed the broken parts and made it livable again. But nothing feels stable. Every place feels temporary. Every place feels under threat.”

Ahmad’s body is visibly showing the effects of little available food and the deficits of water. “I’m so skinny now,” he said. “A friend who hadn’t seen me since 2023 cried when he saw me on video.” He said his friend almost didn’t recognize him. His mother’s heart condition has worsened. “This starvation feels intentional — to break our bodies and dull our minds.” His voice falters.

What weighs on Ahmad most is not the relentless bombing — it’s the slow, grinding toll of hunger and thirst. “Our bodies are weak, our energy gone,” he said. “My life used to be full of promise. Now my only concern is finding something to eat.”

In July 2024, Oxfam released “Water War Crimes: How Israel has weaponised water in its military campaign in Gaza,” a report describing how water deprivation has been used to “dehumanize” and “threaten” Palestinian lives. “We drink rainwater,” Ahmad wrote to us during one period of total siege. “Even when we know the air is poisoned from bombing.”

This is not simply a story of suffering. Gaza forces the world to confront the moral cost of turning life’s most basic element into a means of repression. What happens when God’s most essential provision — water — is turned into a weapon? This is the question Gaza forces upon us.

Water is sacred. From Genesis to Revelation, it is a sign of God’s provision, a gift meant for all. The measure of Christian discipleship is not theological certitude or political alignment — but whether we stand with the thirsty, the displaced, the silenced.

Pastor Massad has watched his childhood home, his church, and many members of his community destroyed. “This situation is very personal,” he told us. “My aunt was killed. The woman who played piano at our church — she’s gone. My street is full of tanks.” And yet, Christian Mission to Gaza continues to serve others. After quoting Matthew 25, Massad paused. “What’s happening in Gaza is beyond words. But we as Christians have love in our hearts for all people. Our hearts are warmed by those who still care.”

In July, Ahmad reported that an Israeli airstrike bombed the water desalination plant in Al-Rimal. “Many were injured,” he told us. “It seems like they’re trying to push us south again.”

The church must not merely pray for rain — it must be a channel through which the water of justice flows.