Photograph by Olivia Meehan

Climate change is causing strange rainfall patterns in Palestine. That compounds the devastation of Israel’s weaponization of water.

Mohammad Al Azza knows what it means to be without water. The 35-year-old was born and raisedin the Aida refugee camp, some four miles south of Jerusalem. The camp—roughly the size of San Francisco’s Alcatraz Island—sits in the West Bank, where Israel controls the water. As a kid, Al Azza would wait in line for an hour or two to fill up a cart full of water jugs with his older brother and sister. Now, the taps mostly run dry. He—like all other camp residents—is forced to buy water instead.

Since October 7, 2023—when the Israeli military began its genocide in Gaza after the deadliest attack yet from Palestinian militant group Hamas, which killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped over 200 others that day—Israel has further weaponized water against Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and historic Palestine. Clean water is becoming even more precious as the planet grows hotter and rain patterns become more volatile due to reckless fossil fuel pollution. 

“In Aida, we’re supposed to get water one day a week for six hours, but we never get it once a week,” said Al Azza, who stands 5 feet and 6 inches tallas he presents my group his slides on a community organization he directs called the Lajee Center. “The longest time was no water in our homes for more than 73 days.”

About a dozen of us are sitting in a semicircle before Al Azza in a dark room, lit only by his projector screen. Aida is our first stop in the West Bank, where I’m traveling with about 10 climate justice activists. The sun is setting outside, and most of the center’s staff have gone home for the day. Except Al Azza. He stayed late to meet with us. 

He’s wearing a long-sleeve plaid shirt, checkered in maroon and navy blue. His downturned eyes look tired as he speaks. We learn that “Lajee” is Arabic for “refugee.” Al Azza shares how the organization serves the estimated 7,244 people who live in the camp; staff teach youth to take photographs and grow their own food. The center’s rooftop greenhouse is full of red, juicy tomatoes and green onions. 

Sustaining green spaces is challenging without fresh water, but somehow, the Palestinian people find a way. I spent 10 days exploring their land, but I needed only one night in Aida to understand how life persists under occupation. It must—with an unrelenting spirit of ingenuity that first filled my heart before tearing it in two.

The separation wall greets me when I arrive in the holy city of Bethlehem, home to the refugee camp. The barrier’s 30-foot cement divisions tower over the Palestinians who long to visit relatives on the other side. Many believe Bethlehem to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ. Children continue to be born there today. Their squeals are the first sounds I hear as we approach the Aida camp.

I step out of our bus and notice a dozen kids kicking a ball around an enclosed soccer field. One boy, perhaps no older than 12, wears a mustard-colored Cristiano Ronaldo jersey, the Portuguese soccer star’s lucky number seven stretched across the boy’s back. I chuckle. I didn’t expect to find Ronaldo’s fandom here.

The community has painted the Palestinian flag all over the arena’s white walls. The Lajee Center built the space, including the boisterous playground next door. April has just started, and the children seem excited for the rainy season to be over. Last year, however, wasn’t very wet at all. The Palestinian Meteorological Directorate reported that the West Bank saw, on average, only 44% of its usual rainfall. Bethlehem received only 7 inches of rain from 2024 to 2025—roughly the same amount that arid Phoenix, Arizona, gets in a year. Meanwhile, air temperatures have been higher than average.

“In Aida, we’re supposed to get water one day a week for six hours, but we never get it once a week. The longest time was no water in our homes for more than 73 days.”

Mohammad Al Azza
Director, Lajee Center

“Things are getting really bad here in terms of the impact of climate change,” said Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, founder and director of the Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University. A scientist by trade, Qumsiyeh points to greenhouse gases—and the human violence that releases them—as the cause of Palestine’s strange weather patterns.

“One of the biggest [sources of] greenhouse gas emissions is the military, wars, and conflict that are burning our planet,” he said.

In Palestine, the Israeli military occupation is the real problem. Climate change is secondary. 

Barely two hours away from Aida, Israeli bombs and attacks have killed at least 52,653 Palestinians in Gaza over the last 590 days, per the latest numbers. Gaza was facing a water crisis before the genocide began; the situation has only worsened since. BBC found last year that more than half of the strip’s water infrastructure—from wastewater treatment plants to desalination plants—has been destroyed or damaged as a result of the violence. We still don’t know how many people have gotten sick or died due to these unsafe and irregular water conditions. We do now know that Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich envisions “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” and its people displaced.

The assault looks different in Aida, which is considered the most tear-gassed place in the world. 

The community is unsure whether chemicals have infiltrated the groundwater supply, but the refugees at Aida can’t pump that water, anyway. Doing so would require digging a well, and that type of construction requires a permit. Israel rejects 99% of building permit applications that Palestinians submit. Instead, people install water tanks on their roofs to store water they purchase or water they collect whenever Israel turns on their taps. However, the water quality can degrade if the liquid sits stagnant in the tanks for too long. 

Some Palestinians collect rainwater—which Israeli law argues is its property—but isn’t water a human right? None of these options compares to permanent, daily access to water at home. Many families are forced to supplement their needs by purchasing water at a higher price. Meanwhile, their groundwater is often diverted to nearby Israeli settlements that most international bodies deem illegal, where some families even relish in community pools.

“Palestinians are not allowed to develop their water resources, either groundwater or surface water, since the first day of the occupation,” said Anan Jayyousi, director of the Energy, Water, and Food Security Research Center at An-Najah National University in Nablus, a city 30 miles north of Jerusalem. “Rainwater harvesting is a source of water, but you cannot rely only on rainwater from your rooftop.”

Al Azza remembers the days when the Israeli military would terrorize the people of Aida by attacking their water tanks—for instance, during the Second Intifada at the turn of the 21st century, when Palestinians staged an uprising against the Israeli occupying force that left at least 5,848 people (largely Palestinians) dead. Al Azza, just 10 at the time, awoke at night to the crash of water tanks spilling. This practice continues today throughout the West Bank, carried out by Israeli settlers. 

“This is one of the ways to punish the families,” Al Azza explained. “It’s an important tool for the colonizer: the collective punishment.”

When an entire people are preoccupied with basic survival—like finding water or food—they have less time to form a unified resistance. But at the Lajee Center, the youth learn how connecting with the earth is its own form of resistance that goes hand in hand with survival.

As I make my way upstairs toward the Lajee Center’s roof, I walk past rows of repurposed plastic water bottles and painted tires now serving as planters. Green vines and succulents grow from the soil nestled inside. When I reach the rooftop, I take in the birds-eye view of the Aida refugee camp. Then, I head into the greenhouse.

Here, Lajee Center staff have developedthree hydroponic systems to grow organic, pesticide-free foodyear-round.This agriculture system requires no soil—just water and nutrients. There’s no need to keep watering the plants; the system recycles the water already inputted. In 2022, one system was burned down in an Israeli military attack, but the people rebuilt. They always do. Since October 7, 2023, the military has come several times just to take down the Palestinian flag that waves on the roof next to the greenhouse.

“Each time they take it, we put it back,” Al Azza said. “It’s not easy.”

The garden space is for the people; before the occupation displaced them from their original lands, most people in Aida were farmers. Now, families can grow what they need at the Lajee Center. 

“This is one of the ways to punish the families. It’s an important tool for the colonizer: the collective punishment.”

Mohammad Al Azza
Director, Lajee Center

When I exit the greenhouse, I look out from the roof. I can see the wall, as well as the military watchtowers where snipers sometimes shoot. In 2013, a soldier shot Al Azza in his face with a rubber bullet. Multiple surgeries later, he miraculously survived with only a scar beneath his right eye. All the bones around it had shattered. 

At the time of his shooting, Al Azza was taking photos from the center’s balcony of the Israeli occupying forces raiding the camp and shooting rubber bullets. Snipers have killed several of Aida’s children over the years. In 2015, there was 13-year-old Abdul Rahman Abedallah. In 2023, 17-year-old Mohammed Ali Ezia. Every year, Israeli occupation forces kill, injure, arrest, and orphan hundreds of Palestinian youth, according to the United Nations.

“Israel’s framing of Palestinian children as ‘human shields’ or ‘terrorists’ to justify the violence against them and their parents is profoundly dehumanizing,” said Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, in a 2023 statement. 

No garden or cultural center or jugs of water can keep the youth safe from this violence. The wall unsettles me as I take it in. What safety does this offer? To whom? I wonder. Not the people it confines.

I manage to shake off the intrusive thoughts as I notice one word painted in white on the wall: “HOPE.”

Biome

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