New Study on Infrastructure Damage in Gaza and the West Bank

Mar 1, 2019 | Leonie Nimmo
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The targeting of water, energy, and agricultural infrastructure has created vulnerability and undermined livelihoods in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to a study published in the International Affairs journal in February 2019. Authors Weinthal and Sowers found that the targeting of infrastructure has helped to “create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and a fragmented, donor-dependent series of encircled enclaves in the West Bank”. They argue that the destruction of civilian infrastructure has long-term ‘reverberating effects’, causing damage to human welfare and ecosystems.

The study is part of a wider project examining the causes and consequences of destruction and degradation of infrastructure in conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It draws on an original database of nearly 1,000 incidents of targeted infrastructure over ten years. The research included interviews with representatives of NGOs and government officials, one of whom claimed that in the Palestinian territories “infrastructure has been held hostage to the conflict”.

The environmental impacts of infrastructure damage can be wide-ranging and severe. As noted by the authors in a previous study, infrastructure providing water, energy and sanitation “are the principal mechanisms that mediate human impacts on natural ecosystems.” The International Affairs study does not expand on the environmental consequences of infrastructure damage in the West Bank and Gaza, so this blog is intended to provide some additional analysis.