In 2015, Israel supplied Gaza with 7.5 million cubic meters of water, according to information supplied to Gisha by Mekorot

February 2, 2016

The response provided by Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, several months ago to a Freedom of Information Application filed by Gisha regarding water supply to Gaza over the last seven years included detailed information about each year, with the exception of 2015, regarding which only partial information was supplied. Therefore, in a repeat Freedom of Information Application (Hebrew) sent by Gisha on January 11, 2016, we requested full information on the amount of water supplied to Gaza in 2015 through the two pipelines operated by Mekorot: the southern line and the northern line which only became operational in March 2015.

The response received from Mekorot on February 2, 2016 indicates that in 2015, Israel supplied the Gaza Strip with 7,585,876 cubic meters of water, the largest quantity supplied to Gaza in recent years. The southern line supplied 4,202,646 cubic meters of water and the new northern line supplied 3,383,230 cubic meters of water in the months it operated – March to December 2015.

Mekorot repeated its claim that it is able to supply the Gaza Strip with 5 million cubic meters of water per year through each of the two lines, that is 10 million cubic meters in total, depending on the reception capacity and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Contrary to reports made by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) and other Israeli authorities, Israel currently does not supply 10 million cubic meters of water to Gaza per year.

On this issue, we note that following repeated communications from Gisha to COGAT (Hebrew) about the fact that COGAT’s Facebook posts regarding water supply to Gaza are incorrect and misleading, COGAT has been posting accurate figures on the amount of water supplied to Gaza each month since January 2016.