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Water sovereignty from the Andes to Palestine: On the global expansion of the national Israeli water company to Argentina and the formation of transnational solidarity

By Miriam Bartelmann[1]

Mekorot, the national water company of Israel, is increasing its presence in Argentina through agreements over water management in ten provinces. This includes all provinces along the Andes, where struggles around water are linked to the extraction of resources. These struggles are often led by Indigenous populations and urban activists affected by water shortages and pollution through extractivist corporations. United by the opposition to the loss of autonomy over water, groups connect transnationally, learning from the experience of water apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories and resist the loss of sovereignty over their water resources.

Struggles around water

The use and management of water are key elements of territorial autonomy. Since humans and animals can survive weeks without food but only days without water, potable water is essential for the survival of humans and more-than-humans. When water sources are polluted, depleted, or cut off, both humans and animals lose the possibility of autonomous survival in their territories.

Now, if water is privatised, people become dependent on the entity that sells said water. If prices and conditions of the sale of water are not regulated by law, communities are at the mercy of the prices set by the private owner and markets. Expropriating communities from their water sources constitutes a means of controlling life and reshaping how communities inhabit particular territories, potentially rendering them uninhabitable and thereby enforcing migration. Consequently, gaining control over water sources has been a strategy of warfare, colonialism, and a way for private companies to gain control over territories for resource extraction.[2]

A colorful mural depicting indigenous people preparing food. On the left side, it shows people injured by police during protests against extractivism.
his mural by Emilio Ramón Haro Galli in Purmamarca, Jujuy, honours the people injured by police during protests against extractivism. “El Agua es Vida” means “the water is life”, while the colourful square emblem is the Wiphala, the flag that represents various indigenous people along the Andes. Foto by and courtesy of Susi Maresca.

Particularly where water is scarce, the relevance of access to and control over water sources is well known. Hence, the enunciation Agua es vida (Water is life) is a credo often found in murals in Argentine regions where the struggles around water are particularly apparent. Due to the size of the Argentine territory and the variety of topographies, each with its own characteristics, the reasons for water conflicts are manifold and vary in character.

The provinces along the Andes spanning over various longitudes, are particularly affected by water contamination through resource extraction. The southern region of Santa Cruz has large freshwater reserves from its glaciers, becoming a point of international attention in times of climate crisis. In the province of San Juan, companies such as the Canadian gold mining corporation Barrick Gold violated laws protecting glaciers.[3] Glaciers are particularly protected as a crucial source of freshwater for all populations living downstream. Fracking projects in Vaca Muerta[4] and Mari Menuco[5] threaten to contaminate water streams such as the Río Negro and the Río Colorado, providing water for whole provinces such as Neuquén and Río Negro.[6] Further North along the Andes, all provinces are exposed to corporate power and strategies, aiming at the extraction of metal ores.[7] Particularly in the most north-west regions of Salta and Jujuy, the increased interest in extremely contaminating lithium extraction needed for the allegedly sustainable energy transitions in Europe and North America[8] puts local Indigenous communities and the defence of their territories under pressure.[9]

Water meets chainsaw

With the anarcho-capitalist government of Javier Milei taking over the federal government in December 2023, struggles around water intensified. Symbolised by a chainsaw in Milei’s election campaigns, his government puts the idea of a lean state and an unleashed economy into practice. This results in massive cuts of state benefits and the abolishment of progressive laws and regulations. These policies also affect water provision particularly, through the privatisation of state-owned companies, such as the Argentine Water and Sanitation services (AySA, Agua y Saneamientos Argentinos) of the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, home to over 15 million people.

Technically, the management of resources and water is under the jurisdiction of the Argentine provinces, but there are federal laws on socio-environmental issues. Through decrees by the Milei government in December 2023, federal laws protecting the environment, like the Law of Forests, were altered, limiting the protection of forests while defunding their conservation programs.[10] Also, the Law of Territory was abolished by decree, which had limited the percentage of territory owned by non-nationals to 30% and prohibited the sale of territories facing water bodies.[11] Environmental groups currently rally against a modification of the law protecting the glaciers as a key water source that would benefit mining interests.[12] In some provinces, like Jujuy, provincial laws have been lifted that protected local Indigenous communities, their right to protest and access to their resources. Meanwhile, the oppression of their resistance intensifies.[13]

A pink poster depicting two men in a pink heart, surrounded by money.
A sign at the plurinational anti-extractivist mobilisation day in Buenos Aires on December 4th, 2023. “Veo el future repetir el passado” means “I see the future repeat the past”. “Negacionistas nunca más” means “denialist never again” while the writing with an S is a pun: “sionista” means Zionist. The two men depicted on the poster are Carlos Menem (l.) and Javier Milei (r.). Menem was Argentinean president from 1989 to 1999 and issued extensive privatization programs during his government, amongst others of the YPF (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, Fiscal Oilfields), the majority state-owned energy company. It was sold to the Spanish company Repsol, and renationalized under Christina Fernández de Kirchner in 2012, on the price of $5 billion of recompensation to Repsol. The women with the white headscarf on the bottom left is a reference to the Mothers of the May-Square (Madres de Plaza de Mayo) who were crucial in building up the pressure that brought the last Argentinian military dictatorship under Jorge Rafael Videla to fall. They are a symbol in fights against oppression. Foto by and with the courtesy of Susi Maresca.

A further part of Milei’s chainsaw policy regards unleashing the market through an extensive economic reform, passed in the Senate in June 2024. Laws controlling companies and protecting the internal market were restrained or abolished, while laws to incentivise privatisation and direct foreign investment were implemented. These reforms are driven by foreign interference, like the International Monetary Fund, granting credits to an already deeply indebted Argentina in the sum of US$ 20 billion, under the condition of opening the economy and orienting it towards the global market.[14] Donald Trump furthermore strengthened this development interfering in the Argentinian mid-term elections in October 2025 when he announced that the US would only keep supporting Argentina economically, for example, through currency swaps, if Milei and his right-wing neoliberal policy stayed in place.[15]

Mekorot, the company managing water apartheid and genocide

A map of Argentina visualizing the state of water agreements in different provinces.
Map by the author.

However, the general shift towards private and foreign management of public infrastructures and the management of resources, including water, preceded Milei’s anarcho-capitalism. In September 2022, the Inter-American Development Bank announced its approval of a credit program of up to US$ 810 million to establish a program for the management and security of water provision in Argentina.[16] Also in September, the then Minister of the Interior Wado de Pedro (from the Peronist Justicialist party) and the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires incentivised the signing of agreements between the Argentine Council of Investment (CFI), the provinces of Mendoza and San Juan, and Mekorot over consultancy and technical cooperation. Catamarca, La Rioja, and Río Negro signed agreements over the beginning of elaborations of water master plans, and Formosa and Santa Cruz initialled consultancy agreements.[17] In April 2024, the provinces of Chubut[18], Neuquén[19], and Jujuy[20] signed an agreement with Mekorot to elaborate a master plan of water development in their provinces. The key ambition of all these collaborations is to make water management more efficient, technologically advanced, and smart.

Mekorot is the national company of the Israeli State, offering “professional water consulting services” in the form of knowledge and technologies, to address water challenges, “to help local water economies make exceptional achievements.”[21] The company engages in projects globally, currently in Uruguay, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan[22], India, and Cyprus[23]. Mekorot discloses little information on their projects or the amount and exact use of public money. Local activists in the affected communities criticise this lack of transparency.

The involvement of private foreign investment is not a new phenomenon, neither in Argentina nor in other countries that are pressured to open up their economies in the context of debt spirals. Structural adjustment programs push for neoliberal development that contains a dynamic driving countries into debt to invest in modernisation approaches and technologies by foreign companies. This is problematic as the state debts and interests are accounted for with national public money while being invested into foreign companies, at times without an open tender for public contracts in which national companies could compete. Infrastructure or technologies require maintenance and repairs through the know-how of the foreign company that constructed them, which oftentimes establishes enduring economic and technological dependencies. In short, countries take up public debts to depend on foreign companies that accumulate their profit elsewhere.

Mekorot, though, is not just any foreign company. It was founded even before the declaration of the Israeli state and has managed the national water infrastructures ever since. Human rights organisations (HROs) and UN reports have accused Mekorot of ‘Water Apartheid’ in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs).[24] According to those HROs, the company has taken control of or destroyed the water sources of the local populations, while the Israeli military denies access to wells by declaring them ‘closed military areas’. Since 1967, Palestinians in the OPT have needed the permission of the Israeli military to construct new water fountains.[25] Mekorot provides the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, considered illegal under international law, with water without any restrictions, while overprizing Palestinians and drying out their farmlands.[26] Through the company, the Israeli authorities sell the Palestinians the water from the same sources they have separated the communities from before through military force, setting the quantity and price per litre.

In sum, water apartheid in the OPTs means that access to water is managed through racial privilege and discrimination. While Israelis in the OPT get unrestricted and unregulated access to water, the Palestinians do not and are at the mercy of overpriced sources. This technique is a deliberate approach to displace Palestinians by destroying their basis of survival and to gain control over the territories.[27]

In addition, the blockade of Gaza since 2007 made its inhabitants dependent on water imports from Mekorot, also before the genocide started. During the genocide in Gaza, however, the restriction of water and food supply has been used as a weapon to deliberately starve the Gazan population and let them die of thirst[28], managed by the water company[29]. In its Environment, Sustainability, and Governance (ESG) report from 2024, Mekorot not only reports how the company adheres to the SDGs, but also how many days their employees functioned as reserve military, thus directly engaging in the genocide.[30] Consequently, contracting Mekorot means to invest in a company accused of crimes against humanity and enabling genocide.[31]

Like with other techniques of domination and oppression such as the spyware Pegasus, Israel engages in exporting these techniques, previously tested on the Palestinian population.[32] These economic relations strengthen authoritarianism globally by refining its tools, while financing the economy of a state committing genocide in broad daylight. Meanwhile, countries closely collaborating economically with Israel and importing technologies, like Germany, criminalise non-violent resistance to these economic relations, such as Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS).[33] BDS follows a strategy of non-violent activism through economic, political and cultural boycott against Apartheid that originated during the international boycott of South Africa lasting from the 1950s to the 1990s.[34]

Resistance to water privatisation and Mekorot

Milei meeting Netanyahu in New York in September 2025, “reaffirming the shared will to continue to deepen the friendship and collaboration that unite Argentina and Israel”, “exchanging over visions of scientific and technological cooperation” and further “aspects of the bilateral relation”[35] implies that the ethical concerns about Mekorot’s complicity in genocide and the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu do not impress the Argentinian government.

Nevertheless, resistance has formed in Argentina and internationally, connecting transregional solidarity with Palestine with local oppositions to water privatisation and socio-environmental defences of territories.[36] The struggle for sovereignty and public control over water management is particularly sensitive in the regions already affected by water contamination caused by the extraction of rare minerals, while Mekorot is accused of links with extractive companies.[37] The opposition to Mekorot furthermore addresses the fact that the agreements and their financing are non-transparent, were signed without prior public consultation, and bypassed an open competitive bidding that would have enabled local companies to compete.[38]

A woman wearing sunglasses is holding a sign that reads "Fuera Mekorot". Other protestors in the background.
The group ‘Fuera Mekorot’ (Mekorot out) and others call for a ceasefire in Gaza during the demonstration on 8th of March 2025 (International Women’s day) in Buenos Aires. Foto by and courtesy of Susi Maresca.

The Palestinian struggle around their water sources connects to the overall Indigenous resistance against water privatisation benefitting extractivist economies. By resisting through protests, blockades, and legal processes, Indigenous populations do not only fight for their own survival, but for the ecological equilibrium of the territories they inhabit. The relevance of the knowledge and practices of Indigenous communities for the protection of socio-ecological balances has long been recognised by the UN.[39]

Affected communities and urban activitsts in Argentina have united under the umbrella organisation called ‘Fuera Mekorot’ (Mekorot out) to advocate together. They organise demonstrations and campaigns together with environmental activists, and people in solidarity with Palestine, for example by protesting at the COP30.[40] Connecting virtually with other Latin American, African and Palestinian groups, they share and exchange information on the history and techniques of Mekorot and educate about the ways they gain influence in different regions globally – and how to pressure against this influence.[41] Having experienced the sensitive connection between sovereignty over water sources and control over territory, information gathered and shared by organisations and academics such as the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON) and Friends of the Earth Palestine (FOE) becomes a particularly valuable source.[42]

The solidarity with Palestine is not merely symbolic, as the mobilisation to suspend contracts, and therefore financial flows to Mekorot, implies defunding institutions that are central for genocidal aggressions and illegal occupation of territory in Palestine, thus ending indirect complicity. The civil opposition in Argentina dates back to 2011, when the governor of the province of Buenos Aires signed an agreement with Mekorot over US$170 million for a water treatment plant in the city of La Plata. It was suspended in 2013 due to joint mobilisation through Palestine-Argentina solidarity groups and major unions: the Argentine Workers’ Central Union (CTA, Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina) and the Association of State Workers (ATE, Asociación de Trabajadores del Estado).[43]

In the region, particularly the civil society in Brazil, has been active and successful in organising against agreements between municipalities and provinces with Mekorot. Local BDS groups work in coalitions with left-wing parties, unions, and groups of affected people, achieving the abolishment of an agreement between Mekorot and the public water distributor of São Paulo in 2009.[44] In the Latin American country with the biggest Palestinian diaspora, Chile, lawyers in solidarity with Palestine have filed a complaint to the General Comptroller’s Office of the Republic to issue an inspection of an agreement signed between the BíoBío region and Mekorot. The lawyers address irregularities such as a lack of transparency, guarantees of compliance, and clauses to limit the company’s responsibility.[45]

Successful approaches combine the pressure of civil mobilisations, progressive political parties and unions. The strength of this approach is to resist and raise awareness on domestic issues such as water privatisation, connecting social and environmental issues, while linking it to the struggles of many affected communities worldwide in transregional solidarity. Shared struggles of (Indigenous) Argentinians and Palestinians against displacement and for autonomy expose how state-backed corporate capitalism drives both environmental destruction and the forced displacement of communities. The former oftentimes drives the latter.

The current situation in Argentina, with up-spiralling costs of living and social fragmentation already sparked general strikes and broad mobilisations, mainly against the privatisation of the public education and health systems, or for rises in pension rates according to inflation. Milei’s anarcho-capitalist, neoliberal policies are simultaneously pushing social inequality and environmental destruction. Identifying the common transregional drivers for socio-environmental injustices, the application of authoritarian techniques and violent displacement of communities, opens up a potential to connect national and international struggles and defend territories and human rights in transregional solidarity.


Notes

[1] I want to express my gratitude to the organizers of the webinar ‘There is something in the Water!’ from September 26, 2025, for teaching me so much and inspiring me to write this piece: PENGON, Friends of the Earth Palestine, Tierra Nativa, Amigos de la Tierra (América Latina y el Caribe) and Stop the Wall.

[2] Mohsen Nagheeby, ‘Israel’s Weaponization of Water: An Urgent Call to Provide Full Access to Water Services in Gaza’, Billet, FLOWs, 19 October 2023, https://doi.org/10.58079/os34; Marcus King and Emily Hardy, ‘Water Weaponization: Its Forms, Its Use in the Russia-Ukraine War, and What to Do About It’, The Center for Climate & Security, 1 June 2023, https://climateandsecurity.org/2023/06/water-weaponization-its-forms-its-use-in-the-russia-ukraine-war-and-what-to-do-about-it/; ‘Water Wars: How Sudan’s Conflict Weaponizes a Basic Human Need’, Geneva Academy, 4 August 2025, https://geneva-academy.ch/water-wars-how-sudans-conflict-weaponizes-a-basic-human-need/.

[3] Instancia Decisiva en la Justicia Federal por el derrame de la minera Barrick Gold en la cuenca del río Jachal en San Juan, Communication (Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas; CAJE, 2025), https://aadeaa.org/audiencia-por-el-rio-san-juan/.

[4] Juan Antonio Acacio et al., ‘Territorios en conflicto: resistencia mapuche contra el fracking en Vaca Muerta’, Anales de antropología 55, no. 2 (2021): 179–89, https://doi.org/10.22201/iia.24486221e.2021.76635.

[5] Neuquén: mapuches denunciaron explosión y derrame en un pozo petrolero cerca del lago Mari Menuco. | Agencia de Noticias FARCO, n.d., accessed 25 November 2025, https://agencia.farco.org.ar/sin-categoria/neuquen-mapuches-denunciaron-explosion-y-derrame-en-un-pozo-petrolero-cerca-del-lago-mari-menuco/.

[6] ‘Una nube tóxica que cubre el cielo de Neuquén’, Otros, FARN, 20 October 2025, https://farn.org.ar/entrevista-lefxaru-nawel-metano-vaca-muerta/.

[7] Soto, ‘» “Mendoza campesina: cronología del avance extractivista y pistas para comprender las disputas por agua y territorio”’, Noticias UNSAM, 5 November 2025, https://noticias.unsam.edu.ar/2025/05/21/mendoza-campesina-cronologia-del-avance-extractivista-y-pistas-para-comprender-las-disputas-por-agua-y-territorio/.

[8] Nefeli Nisioti, ‘The Energy Transition Revisited: The Case of Lithium Extraction in the Andes | IUCN NL’, IUCN NL, 3 July 2025, https://www.iucn.nl/en/story/the-energy-transition-revisited-the-case-of-lithium-extraction-in-the-andes/.

[9] Berta Reventós, ‘Litio: los grupos indígenas que se oponen a la extracción del “oro blanco” en Argentina’, BBC News Mundo, 29 August 2023, https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cevzgv0elp9o.

[10] Lucía Etcheverry, Trama Educativa | Ley de Bosques: qué implica y qué se modificaría en la Ley ómnibus, 21 January 2024, https://tramaeducativa.ar/ley-de-bosques-que-implica-y-que-se-modificaria-en-la-ley-omnibus/.

[11] Agustín Gulman, ‘Ambientalistas temen la extranjerización de tierras y la venta de recursos naturales en Argentina’, El País América, 27 February 2024, https://elpais.com/america-futura/2024-02-27/ambientalistas-temen-la-extranjerizacion-de-tierras-y-la-venta-de-recursos-naturales-en-argentina.html.

[12] Glaciares en riesgo: por qué más de 25 organizaciones rechazan cualquier retroceso en la ley que protege el agua de la Argentina, Communication (Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas; CAJE, 2025), https://aadeaa.org/glaciares-en-riesgo/.

[13] ‘Jujuy en resistencia: lucha indígena contra una reforma que beneficia al extractivismo’, ILC LAC, accessed 25 November 2025, https://lac.landcoalition.org/fr/noticias/jujuy-en-resistencia-lucha-indigena-contra-una-reforma-que-beneficia-al-extractivismo/; Reventós, ‘Litio’.

[14] ‘FMI aprueba crédito de USD 20.000 millones para Argentina’, dw, 4 December 2025, https://www.dw.com/es/fmi-aprueba-cr%C3%A9dito-de-usd-20000-millones-para-argentina/a-72225963.

[15] Jordana Timerman, ‘Milei’s Win in Argentina Had Trump’s Fingerprints All over It. But Just How Long Will Their Friendship Last?’, Opinion, The Guardian, 27 October 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/27/milei-win-argentina-trump-libertarian-experiment-us-support.

[16] ‘Argentina aumentará su seguridad hídrica con apoyo del BID’, BID, 15 September 2022, https://www.iadb.org/es/noticias/argentina-aumentara-su-seguridad-hidrica-con-apoyo-del-bid.

[17] ‘Informes de Mekorot’, Irrigación, 25 March 2025, https://www.irrigacion.gov.ar/web/informes-de-mekorot/; ‘Wado de Pedro encabezó la firma de un acuerdo técnico entre cinco provincias y la estatal israelí Mekorot para mejorar el manejo del agua’, Argentina.gob.ar, 13 February 2023, https://www.argentina.gob.ar/noticias/wado-de-pedro-encabezo-la-firma-de-un-acuerdo-tecnico-entre-cinco-provincias-y-la-estatal; Cooperación Técnica de La Agencia Nacional de Agua de Israel -Mekorot- y El CFI, directed by Ministerio del Interior Argentina, 2023, 01:34:01, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqm_smuMtZE.

[18] ‘Torres Firmó Un Convenio Con El CFI Para Llevar Adelante Un Plan Integral de Desarrollo Hídrico En La Provincia’, Gobierno Del Chubut, 4 April 2024, https://noticias.chubut.gob.ar/new/ver/502.

[19] Gobierno Del Chubut, ‘Torres Firmó Un Convenio Con El CFI Para Llevar Adelante Un Plan Integral de Desarrollo Hídrico En La Provincia’.

[20] Redacción Jujuy, ‘La izquierda solicitó información sobre el Convenio del Gobierno de Jujuy con la empresa israelí Mekorot’, 23-05-2024, La Izquierda Diario – Red internacional, accessed 25 November 2025, https://www.izquierdadiario.es/La-izquierda-solicito-informacion-sobre-el-Convenio-del-Gobierno-de-Jujuy-con-la-empresa-israeli.

[21] ‘International Operations’, Mekorot, n.d., accessed 25 November 2025, https://www.mekorot-int.com/international-operations/.

[22] ESG 2024, Environment, Social & Goverment Report (Mekorot, 2024), 57, https://www.mekorot-int.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Mekorot-ESG-report-2024_English.pdf.

[23] ‘International Operations’. Mekorot, n.d. Accessed 25 November 2025. https://www.mekorot-int.com/international-operations/; for a more detailed list of past and ongoing international cooperations see: Mekorot in Latin America and Africa. PENGON – FOE Palestine, 2024. https://www.pengon.org/writable/uploads/articles/1734598242_a3975302fa67bbf28cc6.pdf.

[24] Valdez, ‘Mekorot, el apartheid del agua y Argentina’, El Salto, 1 June 2023, https://www.elsaltodiario.com/agua/israel-palestina-mekorot-apartheid-agua-argentina.

[25] Valdez, ‘Mekorot, el apartheid del agua y Argentina’.

[26] ‘The Occupation of Water’, Amnesty International, 29 November 2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/.

[27] ‘The Occupation of Water’, Amnesty International, 29 November 2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/.

[28] ‘“Thirst as a Weapon”: UN Experts Condemn Israel’s Deliberate Dehydration and Starvation of the Palestinian People’, OHCHR, 29 July 2025, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/07/thirst-weapon-un-experts-condemn-israels-deliberate-dehydration-and; Nagheeby, ‘Israel’s Weaponization of Water’.

[29] Jørgen Jensenhaugen and Berg, ‘The Starvation of Gaza Is a Deliberate Policy – Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)’, PRIO, 9 January 2025, https://www.prio.org/comments/1801; Emma Graham-Harrison and Emma Graham-Harrison Chief Middle East correspondent, ‘The Mathematics of Starvation: How Israel Caused a Famine in Gaza’, World News, The Guardian, 31 July 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/31/the-mathematics-of-starvation-how-israel-caused-a-famine-in-gaza.

[30] ESG 2024. 6.

[31] Francesca Albanese, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, A/HRC/59/23, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967 (Human Rights Council of the UN, 2025), https://www.un.org/unispal/document/a-hrc-59-23-from-economy-of-occupation-to-economy-of-genocide-report-special-rapporteur-francesca-albanese-palestine-2025/. para. 55 .

[32] Albanese, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide; Anat Peled, ‘Israel’s Latest Military Tech: Tested in Gaza, Wanted by the West’, The Wall Street Journal, 12 April 2025, https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israels-latest-military-tech-tested-in-gaza-wanted-by-the-west-3d9add02. Para. 37, 42.

[33] Shir Hever, ‘Die BDS-Bewegung aus einer jüdischen Perspektive’, dis:orient, 3 October 2025, https://www.disorient.de/magazin/die-bds-bewegung-aus-einer-juedischen-perspektive.

[34] Rob Skinner, ‘“Every Bite Buys a Bullet”: Sanctions, Boycotts and Solidarity in Transnational Anti-Apartheid Activism’, Moving the Social, Moving the Social, 31 May 2017, 97-114 Pages, 97-114 Pages, https://doi.org/10.13154/MTS.57.2017.97-114.

[35] ‘El Presidente Milei se reunió con el Primer Ministro de Israel, Benjamín Netanyahu’, Argentina.gob.ar, 25 September 2025, https://www.argentina.gob.ar/noticias/el-presidente-milei-se-reunio-con-el-primer-ministro-de-israel-benjamin-netanyahu-0. Translated by the author, Spanish in the original.

[36] Romina Pesalaccia, ‘Catamarca: el saqueo premiado con 0 % de retenciones’, Extractivismos, pucara, 11 August 2025, https://www.aguapucara.org/2025/08/11/catamarca-el-saqueo-premiado-con-0-de-retenciones/; Pablo Garciarena, Advisory Opinion on the Climate Emergency and Human Rights submitted to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights by the Republic of Colombia and the Republic of Chile (Xumek, 2023), 74, https://corteidh.or.cr/sitios/observaciones/OC-32/48_Xumek.pdf.

[37] Mekorot in Latin America and Africa (PENGON – FOE Palestine, 2024), 14, https://www.pengon.org/writable/uploads/articles/1734598242_a3975302fa67bbf28cc6.pdf.

[38] ‘Argentina: Communities in Jujuy Protest against Alleged Lack of Consultation by Israeli Company Mekorot’, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, 21 May 2024, https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/argentina-communities-in-jujuy-protest-against-alleged-lack-of-consultation-by-israeli-company-mekorot/.

[39] ‘Indigenous Peoples and Their Communities’, UNEP, 23 May 2018, https://www.unep.org/civil-society-engagement/major-groups-modalities/major-group-categories/indigenous-peoples-and.

[40] See for example: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRFz9O0FPfe/.

[41] See for example transregional webinars connecting activist struggles from Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Western Sahara, Palestine, and Argentina https://www.instagram.com/p/DO_b9mDjDJ6/.

[42] Mekorot in Latin America and Africa (PENGON – FOE Palestine, 2024), https://www.pengon.org/writable/uploads/articles/1734598242_a3975302fa67bbf28cc6.pdf.

[43] Cecilia Valdez, ‘Mekorot, el apartheid del agua y Argentina’, Article, El Salto, 1 June 2023, https://www.elsaltodiario.com/agua/israel-palestina-mekorot-apartheid-agua-argentina.

[44] See other examples at: Soares, Andressa Oliveira. ‘From the Favelas and Rural Brazil to Gaza’. Transnational Institute (Tni), 5 November 2025. https://www.tni.org/en/article/from-the-favelas-and-rural-brazil-to-gaza.

[45] Eman Abusidu, ‘Chile’s Lawyers Ask to Investigate Contract with the National Water Company of Israel (Mekorot)’, Middle East Monitor (MEMO), 21 June 2024, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240621-chiles-lawyers-ask-to-investigate-contract-with-the-national-water-company-of-israel-mekorot/.


References

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About the Author

Miriam Bartelmann is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Freiburg (Germany) and a researcher at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute (ABI), Freiburg. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to environmental conflicts and environmental protection, particularly in Argentina, drawing on sociology, urban political ecology, and human geography. She is especially interested in power dynamics, decolonial thought, poststructuralist theory, and the relationship between epistemic hierarchies and disruptive economies. She is affiliated with the Competence Network Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict, where she co-edits the Virtual Encyclopedia on Peace and Conflict.


Citation: Miriam Bartelmann, Water sovereignty from the Andes to Palestine: On the global expansion of the national Israeli water company to Argentina and the formation of transnational solidarity, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 15.01.2026, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/63869

 


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (January 15, 2026). Water sovereignty from the Andes to Palestine: On the global expansion of the national Israeli water company to Argentina and the formation of transnational solidarity. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved February 7, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15i5a


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