Israel Claims To Own The Rain
It Was Promised to Them 4,000 Years Ago
Israel Claims To Own The Rain
It Was Promised to Them 4,000 Years Ago
Imagine one day that you’re told you can’t even collect the rain that falls on your own roof. Not due to it being dirty or dangerous, but because the occupying foreign force you live under decided the sky belongs to them, too. That’s life under Military Order 158: Palestinians need a permit from the Israeli military just to catch rainwater. The cruel joke is that those permits don’t get handed out, not to Palestinians. So when you build a cistern anyways, the army shows up with bulldozers to smash it.
Just down the road, foreign immigrants turned “Israeli settlers” are filling up swimming pools, spraying down their lawns, and sipping cocktails by the water’s edge like it’s Palm Springs. They’ve got unlimited access, wells, rivers, springs, the works.
Same earth, same sun, same rain.
But one group gets life, the other gets thirst. One side gets an endless supply, the other gets their cisterns bulldozed.
This double standard doesn’t stop with water.
In East Jerusalem, Palestinians live under Israeli rule but can’t vote in Israeli national elections. The foreign settlers who move into their neighborhoods, though?
They get the ballot box and the bulldozer.
Their votes shape the very policies that suffocate Palestinians, while the people on the receiving end are silenced.
When Palestinians try to protest peacefully, you know, the thing we’re all told is the cornerstone of democracy, they’re met with batons, tear gas, and mass arrests, possibly even death.
Settlers, on the other hand, can stage demonstrations, sometimes openly calling for ethnic cleansing or carrying out violence, all under the protection of Israeli police.
The same double standard applies to housing.
In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinians almost never get building permits. So what happens? They build anyway, because people need homes. That’s about the time that the Israeli military shows up with bulldozers, declares the houses “illegal” then grinds them into rubble.
Now flip the coin: Israeli settlements, which the entire world recognizes as illegal, are sprouting up like weeds, with full government cash, shiny new utilities, schools, and even “settler-only roads” where Palestinians are banned from driving. Two people living side by side, but in completely different universes.
And daily life? Palestinians are sliced up by checkpoints, roadblocks, and a permit maze designed to keep them trapped. Want to visit family in the next town, tend your farm, or get to a hospital? Better hope today’s occupation roulette spins in your favor. Meanwhile, settlers glide past on smooth highways Palestinians aren’t allowed to touch, waving from their air-conditioned cars while families roast in line at yet another checkpoint.
The verdict from Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and even the UN is clear: this isn’t “security.” It’s apartheid. A system of domination and segregation, written into law, built on ethnicity and nationality, and enforced with bulldozers and guns. But we don’t even need fancy legal terms to describe it.
When you’ve made it illegal for a family to collect rainwater while letting their neighbor water his lawn with impunity, you’ve exposed exactly what this system is: the denial of basic human existence.
None of this is accidental. It’s not about “security.” It’s about control. Control of the land, the water, the movement, the voices, even the very sky. It’s about ensuring one group thrives while another suffocates.
You don’t have to bulldoze a house or fire a bullet every day to kill people; sometimes, you just have to choke off the basics of life until survival itself becomes resistance.
Israel has managed to colonize the sky. They’ve put laws around the rain. Water, the most basic element of life, has been turned into a weapon of control. And the U.S.? It bankrolls the whole thing while wagging its finger at the rest of the world about “freedom” and “human rights.”
If you’re rich, armed, and useful to empire, you can wall off rivers, outlaw the clouds, and still call yourself a democracy. If you’re not, you’re left thirsty in your own homeland, waiting for permission to drink the rain.