Weaving struggles, from Palestine to Patagonia

At the march on International Women's Day, Fuera Mekorot and other organizations called for an end to the genocide in Gaza. Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 8, 2025. Photo © Susi Maresca.

Reportage • Nadia Bernal • October 3, 2025 • Leer en castellano

In 2022, biologist Raquel Perier discovered that the province of Río Negro, in Argentina's Patagonia region, was set to sign an agreement with Israel's state-owned water company, Mekorot. 

For 30 years, Perier has been involved in the movement led by the province's coastal communities against the construction of oil ports and pipelines in the Gulf of San Matías. For her and her compañeres, the arrival of the Israeli company represents the continuation of extractivism in the region. 

“It's a sacrifice zone, and what they want is to establish foreign control over 100 percent of the territory with companies, foreign companies, of course, fracking companies, mining companies, and now LNG [Liquefied Natural Gas],” Perier said in an interview via video link.

Mekorot has been condemned by international organizations for violating the right to water in Palestine, and enabling genocide in Gaza. The contract between the company and Río Negro is one of a dozen signed with other provinces in Argentina.

Perier says she sees similarities between the displacement experienced by the Palestinian people and the experience of Indigenous communities defending their territory in Argentina. They, too, have suffered displacement due to the exploitation of their natural resources, including, of course, water.

Mekorot establishes agreements with business entities and local governments, granting the company access to detailed information on water, energy, and the environment held by provincial entities. The company then offers advice on water management, which can range from coming up with planning policies, designing water infrastructure projects, recommending technologies to be used, and even advising on user fees.

A trickle of information 

Interior Minister Wado de Pedro, who was part of Alberto Fernández's left-wing government, led a delegation to Israel in April 2022, raising alarms among water activists in Argentina.

Silvia Ferreyra was one of those activists. During the pandemic, she joined forces with colleagues campaigning for a new Law in Defense of Water and Life in Argentina.

“Mekorot started to come up during that process because people from different areas were also involved in grassroots organizing, from Mendoza, San Juan, and the provinces where the water company had first set up shop,” said Ferreyra.

Today, she belongs to the Fuera Mekorot (Mekorot Out) campaign in Argentina, which is made up of organizations defending water rights and collectives condemning the genocide in Gaza.

Silvia Ferreyra, representing the Fuera Mekorot Campaign, during a rally supporting the Global Sumud Flotilla, which is attempting to open a humanitarian corridor in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 1, 2025 © Susi Maresca.

De Pedro told the media in 2022 that one of the aims of touring Israel with governors and representatives from 10 Argentine provinces was to “increase productivity through water projects and proper water management.”

Beginning immediately after the delegation to Israel and continuing for a period of about 11 months, agreements were signed between Mekorot and the Federal Investment Council (CFI). Local communities were not consulted, and the process lacked transparency.

As a result, the provinces of Catamarca, Formosa, Río Negro, Santa Cruz, Mendoza, San Juan, La Rioja, Santiago del Estero, and Santa Fe all received “technical assistance” in water management from Mekorot. In 2024, Jujuy, Neuquén, and Chubut signed similar agreements with the company.

“So we started to investigate and put together information requests about the agreements, and we began to compile information about Mekorot was, how it had been set up, everything,“ said Ferreyra. ”We started looking for ways to organize .”

Since 2022, communities in Argentina have been struggling to learn more about Mekorot, a company accused of stealing water from Palestinians.

To date, they have obtained six of the 12 agreements, to which Ojalá also had access. The agreements detailed how Mekorot would conduct technical studies and projections to create a water allocation system that would regulate demand, as well as alternative supply plans and an overall master plan.

Of the 12 agreements, the only spending information that’s been made public is from the provinces of Río Negro and Catamarca. The Río Negro contract stipulates a payment of US$1,459,854 to the company, while the Catamarca contract sets a payment of US$1,109,489.

Clauses in the contracts prohibit disclosure without the company's written authorization and establish Mekorot’s ownership of the intellectual property generated by the work. There is also a stipulation that any dispute will be subject to English law.

A corporate history of water theft

Mekorot’s modus operandi follows a pattern by which it launches projects in places with extractive industries, unequal access to water, and privatization processes.

The company’s practices have been documented by multiple international organizations and collectives from places where the Israeli company has expanded its operations. According to the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network, Mekorot is also commercially active in Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, and the Dominican Republic, among many others.

Although it is often argued that Mekorot's presence is purely for technical reasons, Ferreyra highlighted that opposing the company is about water sovereignty and challenging water apartheid, given its close connection to Israel.

According to Doctors Without Borders, water is being used as a weapon of war in Gaza. 

“Israel forces Palestinians to purchase water sourced from two major aquifers in their own territory, at inflated prices and with intermittent supply,” reads a report presented in July of this year by Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. 

The report, which is titled From economy of occupation to economy of genocide, notes that Mekorot has a monopoly on water in the occupied Palestinian territory.  Palestinians have been barred from building new water facilities or maintaining existing ones without permission from the Israeli military.

“For at least the first six months post-October 2023, Mekorot ran its Gaza pipelines at 22 % capacity, leaving areas such as Gaza City without water 95 % of the time, actively aiding the transformation of water into a tool of genocide,“ according to the report.

Uniting struggles

Protests against agreements between Mekorot and the provinces intensified midway through this year when it was revealed that the company also provides consulting services to Agua y Saneamientos Argentinos (AySA). This state-owned company manages water and sanitation services in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, which has a population of 15 million. 

The news came together with a privatization process decreed by Javier Milei's government in July. Water management in Argentina is the responsibility of each province, and most providers are public—AySA was nationalized in 2006. Mekorot's involvement with AySA was verified by organizations that recently obtained the agreement through freedom of information requests. 

Marchers in the streets during the plurinational anti-extractivist mobilization in Buenos Aires, Argentina on December 4, 2023. Photo © Susi Maresca.

“This is government policy: handing over strategic water management to a state-owned company from another country, which is also accused of human rights violations,” said Mariano Sánchez Toranzo of the Plurinational Campaign in Defense of Water and Life in an interview with Ojalá.

Sánchez Toranzo pointed to the need to adopt a Law in Defense of Water and Life—a grassroots initiative launched in 2022 with support from various communities—something that’s even more urgent in light of Mekorot's expansion in Argentina. 

Supporters of the bill are seeking to protect water as a common good, establish mechanisms for citizen participation, and halt policies that privatize and commercialize water.

“[The bill] stipulates that water cannot be privatized at any level. That alone would be significant,” he said. “And, in order to hand over management to Mekorot, the provinces would have to provide information and hold a binding referendum.”

Sánchez Toranzo views the bill as a tool for collective action that extends beyond the legal framework. Activists need to gather approximately 550,000 signatures from at least seven provinces in order to submit it to Congress.

If passed, it would mark the first nationwide law proposed through a popular initiative since the mechanism was established in the 1994 constitutional reforms.

Resistance against Mekorot's activities in Argentina has gained momentum as the genocide in Gaza has progressed, connecting with protests demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Activists have made it clear that a company involved in genocide is not welcome in Argentina.

Today, the struggles for water and life in Argentina and Palestine have become intertwined, and the hope is that this union will strengthen their ability to resist.

“Water was what united our struggles, our resistance, our hopes,” says Sánchez Toranzo. “We believe that we must unite our struggles.”