Water as a Human Right: The Palestinian Occupied Territories as an Example

Abstract

This paper deals with water as a human right. It examines several international agreements which refer to water as a human right to review whether these agreements are legally binding to states that signed them and/or became members to them, and whether water is considered in these instruments as a ‘human right’. These documents pertain to both branches of international law, in time of peace and in time of war. The paper then examines the ‘status of water’ in the Palestinian Territories occupied by Israel since 1967 in order to evaluate Israel's attitude towards water in these territories and whether it respected the right of the Palestinian population to their water rights.