Water in Israel

Israel turned scarcity into an export industry. A country short of natural water runs a surplus system. Five large Mediterranean desalination plants anchor supply, and 90% of domestic wastewater is recycled, mostly on farms.² In wet years Israel now pumps water back into the Sea of Galilee and sells increasing volumes to Jordan. The model rests on full metering, real prices and one national grid. It is the region's proof that hydrology need not be destiny.

In 2025 the system crossed a threshold no other country has reached. The National Carrier now runs in reverse, pumping desalinated Mediterranean water uphill into the Sea of Galilee. Nowhere else has a natural freshwater lake been refilled from the sea. Desalinated water first reached the lake in October 2025, and pumping rose to about 4,000 m³ an hour by March 2026, stabilising the lake that anchors Israel's system and its water commitments to Jordan.²²²³

The same system sits inside the region's most contested water geography. Allocations to the Palestinians have been frozen since Oslo II, and water is woven into every scenario for the day after the wars.

A quick-reference dashboard for Israel: headline economy and water indicators³⁰³¹, water stress against the scarcity thresholds, non-conventional supply, and the institutions behind the sector. The commercial picture, with buyers, deal structures and the project pipeline, is in the market brief.

One interactive map of Israel's water, built from real geodata. Climate & drought maps the aridity gradient (WorldClim) with warming projections. The WRI Aqueduct layers, covering overall water risk, water stress and flood risk (plus groundwater decline where the trend is significant), shade every river sub-basin by its 0–5 risk score. Demand shows where the population, and the water demand, concentrate. Infrastructure brings the physical system together: rivers, dams (FAO AQUASTAT), treatment plants, desalination and the major conveyors. Hover any sub-basin or marker for detail; sources are cited under each view.

Israel runs from Mediterranean hills to true desert. The north has a Mediterranean climate and the south is arid, with a narrow semi-arid strip between.² The central highlands reach 1,208 m at Mount Meron in the Galilee.¹ The Jordan Rift Valley, part of the 6,500 km Syrian–East African Rift, holds the Jordan River, Lake Tiberias and the Dead Sea.¹ The Negev covers about 12,000 km², more than half the land area.¹

Rainfall

Rain falls sharply from north to south. The far south averages under 100 mm a year, while parts of the north receive more than 1,100 mm.¹ Station averages for 1991–2020 show the gradient: Safed 688 mm, Haifa 565 mm, Tel Aviv 557 mm, Jerusalem 522 mm, Be’er Sheva 192 mm and Eilat only 23 mm.² About 70% of rain falls between November and March, and June to August are often rainless.¹ Snow can fall on the central highlands, including Jerusalem, in January and February.¹

Totals swing widely. National rainfall averaged 6.13 billion m³ a year in 1991–2020, but only 4.5 billion in 2016–17 and 8.44 billion in 2019–20.² 1998–99 was the worst drought year in a century.¹ In early February 2025 the Water Authority said the winter was on course to be the driest in a century, with just 55% of the average. The Jordan River’s flow was the lowest since 1960.⁵

Heat

January temperatures range from 5 to 10 °C and August from 18 to 38 °C.¹ On 17 July 2019 Sodom reached 49.9 °C, the highest reading in Israel since 1942.² A long heat wave in late August and early September 2020 peaked at 45 °C.² Average temperatures have risen by about 0.6 °C a decade.² The adaptation plan puts the rise at about 1.4 °C between 1950 and 2017.³ Heat waves at least 6 °C above average for more than three days have become significantly more frequent.³ Rainfall fell by 3.4% in 1988–2017 against 1961–1990, a trend that is not statistically significant.³

Projections and the coast

Under high emissions, temperatures are expected to rise by a further 1.2 °C by 2050 and 4 °C by 2100.³ The Israel Meteorological Service expects rainfall to fall by 10–20% in 2071–2100 against 1988–2017, with more runs of dry years.³ Sea level has risen by 14.9 cm over 19 years.² The coastal aquifer is already damaged by seawater pushing inland, and further rises will worsen it.³

Rainfall and temperature in numbers

Averaged over the whole of Israel, ERA5 reanalysis gives about 216 mm of rain a year and a mean temperature of 20.3 °C for 1991–2020. About 60% of that rain falls in December, January and February, and 4 months average less than 5 mm. Since 1971 the country has warmed by about 0.42 °C a decade. Average rainfall in 1993–2022 was about 11% lower than in 1951–1980, and single years swing widely around that.

Projected change

Source: World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal, retrieved September 2026. ERA5 0.25° reanalysis for the annual series (1950–2022) and the monthly climatology (1991–2020); CMIP6 0.25° multi-model ensemble median for the projections, as change against 1995–2014. These are national averages, which hide the gap between wet highlands and dry interiors, and reanalysis rainfall over deserts carries wide uncertainty.

The manufactured majority

Israel’s natural supply averaged 1,249 MCM a year between 1932 and 2010. From 1993 to 2010 it averaged only 1,155 MCM, and national planning now assumes 1,020 MCM a year to 2050.¹⁸ The sea and the sewer fill the gap. By 2015 four large desalination plants were running: Ashkelon at 120 MCM a year, Palmachim at 90, Hadera at 127 and Sorek at 150. A fifth, at Ashdod, was under construction.¹⁰ The Water Authority’s 2025 listing puts Ashkelon at 115 MCM, Hadera at 137 and Ashdod, producing since 2015, at 100.¹² Treated effluent became agriculture’s largest single source. The Dan Region plant at Shafdan alone treats 130 million m³ a year.¹⁷ The natural sources now serve as a strategic reserve. Since October 2025 desalinated water has even been pumped back into the Sea of Galilee.²²

The main rivers

The table ranks the rivers of Israel by the largest natural flow they reach inside the country. Natural flow is the modelled long-term average before any withdrawals. For a heavily used river it measures what the river could carry, not what arrives today.

Sources: Grill, Lehner, Thieme et al. (2019), Mapping the world’s free-flowing rivers, Nature 569, dataset under CC BY 4.0, for length, natural flow (WaterGAP, 1971–2000) and free-flowing status, meaning the share of the river’s length inside Israel still classed as free-flowing. No flow figure is given below 20 m³/s, where a global model is too coarse to rank small rivers. Dams from the FAO AQUASTAT regional inventories, matched to the nearest river reach, so a dam on a tributary close to a main stem can be counted against the main stem. The same rivers are drawn on the water map above under Rivers & lakes.

Israel’s farms once ran on the same fresh water as its cities. Between 1958 and 2009 agriculture took 69% of available water on average, households 25% and industry 6%.⁸ Domestic use rose sharply from the 1980s, while farm use showed no clear trend. In the 1960s the new National Water Carrier supplied 60% of the country’s water.¹⁶

From fresh water to effluent

The first shift was technical: from the mid-1970s farms moved almost entirely to pressurised irrigation. Field efficiency rose from 40–50% to 80–95%.¹⁶ The second shift was forced by drought, as dry years from the late 1980s cut freshwater allocations to farms and treated effluent filled the gap. Around 2010 agriculture used 1,045 MCM a year, of which effluent supplied 38%, brackish water 14% and potable water 42%. The national target is 26% potable by 2050.¹⁸ Within a decade, farm use of potable water fell by more than half.¹⁷

By 2013 national consumption stood at 2,187 MCM, with agriculture taking 58%, households 35% and industry 7%. Of the farm total, 744 MCM was recycled or brackish water.¹⁰ Effluent reached half of agricultural allocations in 2014, when about 85% of all wastewater was reused.¹⁰¹¹ Spain, the next best performer in the OECD, reused 17–18%.¹⁹ By 2023 total supply had reached 2,556 MCM. Agriculture took 1,261 MCM (49%), households and industry 1,041 MCM (41%), Jordan and the Palestinian Authority 211 MCM (8%) and nature 43 MCM (2%). Only 35% of farm water was potable.¹² In 2022, 94% of the 620 MCM of sewage was treated and 85% was reused.¹²

The sea replaces the lake

Large-scale desalination began at Ashkelon in 2005.¹⁹ By 2011 three plants supplied 320 million m³, about 42% of domestic needs.¹⁷ By 2019 five plants produced some 600 MCM a year, about 70% of drinking water.²¹ A 2018 cabinet plan set output at 1,100 MCM by 2030.²⁰ The Water Authority records government decision 3886 as a capacity of 1,100–1,200 MCM by 2030.¹² Pumping from the Sea of Galilee collapsed in step, from 513 MCM in 2001–02 to 25 MCM in 2018–19 and 20 MCM in 2025.²¹²² Household use fell too, from 100 m³ per person in 2000 to 90 m³ in 2013.¹⁹

Withdrawals over time

FAO’s AQUASTAT estimates put Israel’s freshwater withdrawals at 1,543 million m³ in 1970 and 1,530 million m³ in 2021. Agriculture’s share of the total moved from 77% in 1974 to 48% in 2021.

Source: FAO AQUASTAT via the World Bank World Development Indicators, retrieved September 2026. AQUASTAT revises national figures irregularly and fills the years between surveys, so a jump between two adjacent years usually marks a new national estimate rather than a change on the ground.

Israel runs one integrated national system. The National Water Carrier, inaugurated in 1964, moves water from Lake Kinneret and the aquifers to the crowded centre and the arid south.¹⁷ Planners expected potable demand to grow from about 1.2 billion m³ a year to 2.45 billion by 2050.¹⁰

Desalination

The decision to desalinate at scale came in 2000, as scarcity grew.¹ Installed capacity was about 440,000 m³ a day in 2002.¹ Large plants followed as concessions under government decisions from 2001, such as Sorek, a build-operate-transfer plant of 150 million m³ a year.¹⁰ By 2022 five main plants shared the output: Sorek 28.6%, Hadera 25.1%, Ashkelon 15.6%, Ashdod 15.4% and Palmachim 15.4%.² Seawater desalination rose from 277 million m³ in 2010 to 609 million m³ in 2019. It then fell by 11%, to 540 million m³ in 2022.² The Water Authority’s 2025 base scenario adds Sorek II at 200 MCM, Western Galilee at 100 MCM and a plant at Emek Hefer. It targets 1,400 MCM of capacity by 2031, 1,750 MCM by 2050 and 2,750 MCM by 2075.¹² Sorek II missed its planned start in early 2024, partly because of the war, and began operating in 2025.¹³

Wastewater and reuse

In 2022, 574 million m³ of wastewater was treated, 51% more than in 2000.² That year 90% of domestic wastewater was recycled for agriculture and urban irrigation.² Since 1993, 62 major reclamation projects have added about 142 million m³ a year of reclaimed water.¹¹ The Shafdan plant for Greater Tel Aviv reuses all its effluent, sending it by pipeline to the Negev.¹¹ Policy made tertiary treatment the standard for all plants from 2010.¹¹

Networks and security

By law, all water supply must be metered.¹⁷ The OECD put losses from national and urban pipelines at 10–20%, from leaks, theft and faulty meters.¹⁷ Water Authority data show non-revenue water falling from 14% in 2010 to 7.8% in 2023.¹² Losses in Mekorot’s transmission system were 4.07% in 2024.¹³ Automated meter reading has replaced all manual meters in ten towns, and the largest installed 76,000 units.⁴ In April 2020 an alleged Iranian cyberattack on six Water Authority facilities tried to raise chlorine levels in the supply.⁶

The asset base in numbers

Sources: FAO AQUASTAT regional dam inventories (CC BY 4.0), which list large dams with a published capacity and can lag recent construction; the MENA Water Review major projects register, where each record cites its source on the project page. The database follows large contracted projects, not the whole asset base.

Salt was Israel’s first water-quality crisis. Before 1964 chloride in the Sea of Galilee reached 400 mg/L.⁸ The saline water carrier, completed in 1967 with the national carrier project, diverts saline springs from the western shore to the lower Jordan. It removes about 70,000 tonnes of salt and 15–20 MCM of water a year, and chloride in the lake fell to 236 mg/L by 2006.⁸

The lake still runs close to its limits. Between 2000 and 2009 the two seasonal chloride standards were breached in 29 and 30 of 48 months, and the cyanobacteria limits in 15 and 34 months.¹⁷ In the 2017–18 drought the Water Authority pumped 17,000 tonnes of salt out of the lake.²⁰ Nutrients are the second pressure. Draining the Hula wetland in the 1950s raised nutrient loads and triggered potentially toxic cyanobacteria. The 2013 UN-ESCWA inventory found that more than half of the lake’s nutrient input came from the Hula Valley.⁸

The coastal aquifer

Groundwater has fared worse. Nitrate in the coastal aquifer rose from 30 to more than 60 mg/L over 60 years, above the 50 mg/L drinking limit. Both nitrate and salinity climbed sharply after 2000.¹⁷ Over-pumping, seawater intrusion and chloride in irrigation effluent all contribute, and the OECD judged 6% of the aquifer polluted by industry. Between 1998 and 2014 Israel closed 199 drinking-water wells: 107 for nitrate, 24 for chloride, 21 for volatile organic compounds, 18 for EDB and 14 for perchlorate. Industrial pollution accounted for 30% of the closures, almost all on the coastal aquifer.¹⁵ The mountain aquifer’s Yarkon–Taninim basin, with nitrate of 5–25 mg/L, has become the main drinking source.¹⁷

Supplied drinking water is tightly controlled by comparison. Microbiological non-compliance fell from 6.5% in 1991 to 0.2% in 2008.¹⁷

The reported indicators

Sources: WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme via the World Bank; SDG 6.3.1 and 6.3.2 from the UN Statistics Division SDG database, retrieved September 2026. Safely managed means an improved source on the premises, available when needed and free from priority contamination. SDG 6.3.2 rests on each country’s own monitoring network, so a high share can mean few water bodies were assessed, and values move when methods change between reporting rounds.

A contest older than the state’s borders

Water was a front line before it was a treaty subject. In 1951 Israel began draining the Hula inside the demilitarised zone with Syria. The work led to the first of many clashes between the two.⁸ In 1953 Israel began the National Water Carrier with an intake at Jisr Banat Yaqub, also in the zone. Syria attacked the works and complained to the United Nations, and the intake moved to the lake’s north-western shore.⁸

Washington tried to settle the basin in the same years. In 1955 the plan of US envoy Eric Johnston divided 1,503 MCM a year. Jordan would get 720 MCM, Israel 616, Syria 132 and Lebanon 35. The riparians accepted the plan on technical grounds, but in October 1955 the Arab League Council voted against ratification, since signing implied recognising Israel.⁸ The plan was never implemented, yet it remains the most authoritative reference for Jordan basin allocations.

The carrier opened in 1964. Arab states then began diverting the Hasbani and Banias headwaters towards the Yarmouk. Israel bombed the diversion site in 1965, and some authors count the dispute among the causes of the 1967 war.⁸ In June 1967 Israel took the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza, and with them the Jordan headwaters and major groundwater. In 1969 Israel raided Jordan’s East Ghor Canal on suspicion of over-diversion.⁸

The agreements of the 1990s

The 1994 peace treaty with Jordan set out water in Annex II. Israel may pump 12 MCM from the Yarmouk in summer and 13 MCM in winter. It may take a further 20 MCM in winter, in exchange for 20 MCM of Jordan River water delivered to Jordan in summer. Both sides undertook to find another 50 MCM a year of drinkable water. A Joint Water Committee of three members each oversees the annex.⁹ Since 1997 Israel has transferred an interim 25 MCM a year. Since 2010 it has also sold Jordan up to 20 MCM at the price of desalinated water.¹⁴ Deliveries to Jordan reached 53.2 MCM in 2013.¹⁰ Several provisions were never implemented as written, the UN-ESCWA inventory notes, and the committee has no means of resolving disputes.⁸

The 1995 Oslo II Interim Agreement recognised Palestinian water rights in the West Bank. Their definition was left to permanent-status talks. The agreement put future Palestinian needs at 70–80 MCM a year and set out 28.6 MCM of additional supply for the interim.²⁸ Israel’s Water Authority says it supplied 60 MCM in 2014, against an obligation of 31 MCM.¹⁴ The UN-ESCWA inventory records the other side. The committee’s consensus rule let Israel veto Palestinian requests for new wells, and Palestinians have no access to the Jordan River.⁸ The permanent-status talks never produced an agreement.

The northern headwaters

Israel controlled the Hasbani during its occupation of southern Lebanon from 1978 to 2000. In 2002 Lebanon prepared a pumping station at the Wazzani springs. On 10 September Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the plan a casus belli. The Hasbani supplies an estimated 20–25% of the inflow to the Sea of Galilee.²⁶ US, UN and EU mediators failed to agree quotas. Lebanon completed the station, but the crisis set firm de facto limits on its plans.⁸

Since 2020

Cooperation with Jordan resumed through energy. On 22 November 2021 Israel, Jordan and the UAE signed a declaration of intent in Dubai. Jordan would export 600 MW of solar power to Israel, and Israel would examine exporting 200 million m³ of desalinated water to Jordan.²⁴ At COP27 in November 2022 the two states added a declaration on restoring the Jordan River.²⁵ On the northern front, hostilities with Hezbollah intensified sharply on 2 March 2026 amid the wider regional escalation.²⁷ At home, desalinated water first flowed into the Sea of Galilee on 23 October 2025. By March 2026 the reversed carrier was pumping about 4,000 m³ an hour.²²²³

The record

Shared river basins

Cooperation and conflict on the record, 1948 to 2008

The International Water Events Database scores every reported interaction between riparian states on the Basins at Risk scale, from formal war over water to voluntary unification. Cooperative and conflictive events add up to less than 100% because neutral events are counted too.

Source: Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database, International Water Events Database, Oregon State University, as compiled by the Transboundary Waters Atlas. The series ends in 2008; every later dispute and agreement is outside it and is covered in the text above.

The agreements

Source: Master Treaties Database of the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (February 2023 edition), via the Transboundary Waters Atlas. Titles as recorded, with spelling normalised. Colonial-era boundary instruments appear because they fixed water rights on rivers that later became international.

Joint bodies

• Joint Water Committee between Israel and Palestine (JWC4)Jordan · 1995 · Israel, Palestine Territories
• Joint Water Committee between Jordan and Israel (JWC3)Jordan · 1994 · Israel, Jordan

Source: the river basin organisation database of the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (2013). A joint body on paper is not evidence that it meets.

Shared aquifers

• Arava Valley / Wadi Araba Alluvial AquiferJordan · data moderate
• Coastal Aquifer BasinEgypt, State of Palestine · data good
• Eastern Mountain AquiferState of Palestine · data good
• Eocene AquiferLebanon · data limited
• Northeastern Mountain AquiferState of Palestine · data good
• Sinai–Negev BasinEgypt · data moderate
• Western Mountain AquiferState of Palestine · data good

Source: IGRAC and UNESCO, Transboundary Aquifers of the World. Data reliability is IGRAC’s own assessment of the information behind each outline.

The Water Law, first enacted in 1959, declares all water resources public property under state control.¹⁷ There are no private water rights, and water may be used only under permit.¹⁷ In 2004 nature was added as a legitimate use of water.¹⁷ The Water Authority, created in 2007, regulates the whole cycle from supply to recovery.¹⁷ Decisions rest with the eight members of the Water Authority Council, drawn from the authority, five ministries and the public.¹⁷ Mekorot, the national water company founded in 1937, supplies 70% of consumption.¹⁷ A 2001 law set up municipal water and sewerage corporations, and a special Water Tribunal hears disputes under the Water Law.¹⁷

Prices and plans

A 2010 reform raised domestic tariffs by about 40% to cover full costs.¹⁰ It introduced two blocks: US$2.3 per m³ below 3.5 m³ per person a month, and US$3.7 above.¹⁰ Domestic tariffs were then cut by 15% in 2014–2015.¹⁰ For farms, the plan was to replace price subsidies with direct support, and to release freshwater quotas in exchange for effluent.¹⁰ The Water Authority’s 2010 master plan counted on 750 million m³ of desalinated seawater.¹⁷ Climate adaptation runs through Government Resolutions 4079 of 2018 and 1902 of 2022, and a Climate Bill passed its first reading in April 2024.³

Israel has largely solved supply at home, but the climate margin is narrowing. Rainfall could fall by 10–20% by the end of the century, and the coastal aquifer is already losing ground to the sea.³ Desalinated output fell between 2019 and 2022, a reminder that the system leans on a handful of coastal plants.² Those plants and pipes are also exposed to cyberattack and war.⁶

Regionally, Israel’s surplus is becoming a strategic instrument, through water sales to Jordan and any future arrangement with the Palestinians. The region’s most solved water system is also its most entangled.