ISLAMABAD - Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest act on the world stage played like a morality tale, except its moral was hypocrisy written in blood. Bathed in studio lights, the Israeli prime minister crowned himself the savior of the Iranian people, vowing to “save countless lives” from the cruelty of water scarcity. 

Brandishing Iranian water statistics as prophecy, he warned of 50 million displaced souls and praised Israel’s “solutions” for a declared enemy. Yet, as his words travelled the airwaves, only seventy kilometers away, Gaza’s children are dying of thirst, their water cut off by the very state that claims to rescue strangers from water scarcity.

When those words were used and the internet spread, the children of Gaza were consuming brackish, bacteria contaminated water- when they could even get a drop to drink at all. Areas in the besieged strip were without clean running water in months at a time. Pipelines that are shattered and buried under rubbles lie in bombed out districts. Gaza Health Ministry, UNICEF, and UNRWA state that water shortages combined with famine caused by blockade-related starvation, has claimed at least 315 lives in recent months, more than half of whom are under five.

Indeed, the inhumanity is not by chance, but is by policy. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant outlined a full siege of Gaza two days later providing similar information: “No electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” Water was understood, although not spoken. Israeli officials closed Mekorot, the state water firm, which had been supplying almost 10 million liters a day. The outcome was a man-made drought in one of the most populated lands on our planet. 

According to OCHA, in December 2023 the average amount of available water daily in Gaza was reduced to less than three liters of water per person, a fifth of the minimum amount required to survive by WHO. By March 2024, residents of northern Gaza were enduring less than one liter a day, and this is in most cases not even drinkable. Up to 65 water wells were bombed out, as were three major desalination plants, and more than 50 kilometers of water piping; fuel shortages disabled pumping stations.

This is a crime that is clear as per the international humanitarian law. Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions also prohibits “attacking, destroying, removing or rendering useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” which should explicitly include water infrastructure. The International Committee of the Red Cross views the denial of water as one of the war crimes in case it is employed as a means to starve civilians or displace them. In April 2024, Human Rights Watch published the report entitled “Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged”, which concluded that Israel had turned deprivation of water and food into a weapon of war as the blockade had been causing epidemic levels of disease that disproportionately killed children and elderly people. The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, has termed it as an imminent death sentence of the children of Gaza.

The most damaging numbers are not counted using liters, but in human lives. UNICEF’s March 2025 assessment reported a 45% rise in diarrheal disease among children under five compared to pre-war levels. At least 120 cases of infant mortality due to dehydration and water-borne diseases were recorded in the first year of the siege by the Palestinian ministry of health. 

The story of Mariam, a six-year-old child in Khan Younis, who died of drinking contaminated water collected in a rooftop tank because of shortage of bottled water in January of the year 2025, is a sad commentary of the lives of children in and around Khan Younis, because of water shortages. Her mother has described to Al Jazeera: “She cried the whole night with stomach pain. By the following morning, she was gone.” In Beit Lahia, seventy-year-old Hassan who had already survived four Israeli aggressions succumbed to kidney failure due to the closure of dialysis machines due to shortage of sterile water. Physicians at the Kamal Adwan Hospital reported cancelations of 70 percent of dialysis sessions in the north of the Gaza Strip due to the inability to ensure safety of water.

It is not the first time water can be used as a weapon. During the 2014 operation Protective Edge, Israeli attacks left the largest wastewater treatment plant in Gaza damaged, resulting in raw sewage flowing to water aquifers. In 2021, the desalination plants funded by the EU were bombed. On every occasion, reconstruction was held up not by technical difficulty, but by Israel’s import control of necessary supplies. The Gaza Water Authority has constantly cautioned that even after the war, full healing would take years, so long as the blockade is lifted. Even talk about the rehabilitation becomes nonsense when there is no fuel, spare parts, and chemicals to treat.

The message by Netanyahu to the Iranians is designed to suit international view. But the hypocrisy is obvious: Gaza, which is only 70 kilometers away Tel Aviv, is deliberately denied the very water-saving technologies, which Israel displays at international expos. The same can be said about the death of Palestinian journalists at the hands of Israel, notes Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi: “Such a thing does not indicate strength, but the crumbling regime of despise losing global solidarity.” Netanyahu seeks to undermine Iranian unity—a key barrier against Israeli aggression—by presenting himself as a potential savior of Iran and attempting to rehabilitate Israel’s image on the global stage.

The policy has been described by the Global South. Pakistan has criticized the blockade as a war crime anchored by siege tactics. China and Russia have urged the United Nations to investigate the deliberate targeting of water infrastructure, stressing that such actions breach international humanitarian law. Their demand comes amid conflicts where attacks on vital water facilities in Gaza have directly harmed civilians.

The airstrikes have been referred to by Iran as environmental war on a people. Washington and European capitals, by contrast, have protected Israel. All resolutions issued by the Security Council to restore the utilities in Gaza have been vetoed by the United States. Countries, mostly Europeans, that provide funding for the Palestinian water projects have declined to publicly penalize Israel on the destruction of this project yet they engage in silent dialogues that do not make any difference.

Almost 90 percent of waste water is reused in Israel-the highest rate globally. It has invented drip irrigation and made it commercial. Netanyahu employs these figures to pose as a savior of the climate disaster. Nevertheless, as said by one of the Palestinian engineers displaced in Beit Hanoun, “They want to be remembered as the nation which makes the desert bloom but they have transformed our home to come and make desert.”

Propaganda may shape the narrative, but the images emerging from Gaza—children clutching empty jerrycans, mothers boiling brackish water, and hospital wards shuttered for lack of sterilized equipment—will endure far longer than Netanyahu’s speeches. 

Gaza siege is the best documented instance of a humanitarian crisis in the recent times. The evidence exists in the form of UN cables, satellite pictures and hospital death certificates. It will not be read in the history books that Netanyahu has made this offer with a Christian spirit, but rather it will go down in history as the hideous representation of hypocrites, a man extends his hand to give water to foreigners whilst standing on the throats of his neighbors to prevent them drinking that water. And as the world hears his hymn, it must not forget the unmarked graves of the children of Gaza who died with dry lips.

Muhammad Akmal Khan is a Pakistani journalist and foreign affairs analyst. He writes on South Asia–Middle East relations, conflict diplomacy, and media freedom under war.