German public research money and the occupation of water in Palestine

A Collaborative InvestigatioN

Germany invested over €1.8 million to develop a tool that models the impact of adding or removing water wells across an aquifer lying partly beneath occupied Palestinian territory. That feature was defined with Israel's water authorities and transferred to Israel's national water company, covering a territory where Israel demolishes Palestinian wells and where Palestinians are refused the permits to drill new ones.

📷: A Palestinian child holds a gallon of water in Qarrawat Bani Hassan village, West Bank, May 21, 2015. According to the municipal council of Qarawat Bani Hassan, the portion of each villager has become 2 liters per day as the village and many other nearby villages receive 97 cubic meters per hour. The municipal council said the Israeli authorities did not give a reason for such a step.
Photographer: Ahmad Al-Bazz

by

Timeline

TU Berlin partnered with the occupier to "ensure water access for all"

MAIN FINDINGS

The three identified failures

1
THE MEDWATER CONSORTIUM FAILED THE CONDITIONS OF ITS OWN FUNDING

2
THE MEDWATER CONSORTIUM BUILT A TOOL FOR THE OCCUPIER, OPERABLE IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY

3
THE GERMAN TERRITORIAL CLAUSE CANNOT COMPLY WITH INTERNATIONAL LAW

“Compared to the project proposal, subcontracts with the following institutions were not finalized: Environmental Water Resources Engineering (EWRE), Palestinian Hydrology Group (PHG), Palestinian Water Authority (PWA), and Hydro-Engineering Consultancy (HEC).”

TU Berlin, informing BMBF in its final report that no Palestinian partner received a subcontract.

The Territorial Clause did not fail in any of these projects—it allowed the projects to continue. If Germany does not change its legal oversight of cooperation with Israeli institutional, governmental, and corporate partners, then the German state and its publicly funded research initiatives will not adhere to international law, nor meet the standards set by the ICJ Advisory Opinion (AO) of July 2024.

The area they used to demonstrate the DSS adding four new wells lies beside Adh-Dhahiriya in Hebron Governorate—where, as the consortium’s own partner had documented in 2013, not a single Palestinian has been permitted to drill wells since 1967, and where, in August 2025, Israeli authorities sealed seven Palestinian artesian wells with concrete.

To the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, and the Federal Foreign Office

1
SUSPEND ALL FUNDING OF COOPERATION WITH MEKOROT, WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT.

No German public research funding should flow to any project that names Mekorot as partner, stakeholder, subcontractor or recipient of results, and no results of any federally funded project should be transferred to it. This applies now to StaySafe which runs until 2027. The suspension should remain in force until Mekorot is removed from the OHCHR database of business enterprises involved in activities relating to Israeli settlements.

2
REPLACE THE TERRITORIAL CLAUSE WITH A TEST OF ACTIVITY AND END-USE

The Clause currently only asks where an institution is headquartered. It must instead ask where the funded activity takes place, where the funded institution operates, and where the results may be used. Until an instrument of at least that scope is in force, BMFTR has no basis on which to state that its funding does not extend to the occupied Palestinian territories.

3
WHERE A FUNDED PROJECT INVOLVES PHYSICAL WATER INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE WEST BANK, REQUIRE AND SUPPORT THE PERMIT APPLICATIONS ON WHICH ITS IMPLEMENTATION DEPENDS

BMFTR and the Federal Foreign Office should support the applications for permits of the Palestinian partners in relation to the funded project; and the outcome of every such application should be published annually.

To the Technical University of Berlin, and to all German universities

1
ESTABLISH A COMMITTEE TO ASSESS RESEARCH PROPOSALS AND ONGOING PROJECTS FOR RISKS TO HUMAN RIGHTS AND COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL LAW

Not only for military or dual-use risk, and with the authority to require changes to a project or to end it.

2
REFER MEDWATER AND GRACCE TO THAT BODY FOR REVIEW, AND PUBLISH ITS FINDINGS

3
END ALL COOPERATION WITH MEKOROT

and with any enterprise listed in the OHCHR database of business enterprises involved in activities relating to Israeli settlements, or otherwise active in illegally occupied territories, in current and future projects.