From Water Deficit to Water Exporter: How Israel Built a Global Solution

TEL AVIV — Israel ranks 149th globally in annual rainfall. More than half the country is desert. As recently as the mid-2000s, the Sea of Galilee repeatedly hit critical lows and Israel faced a water deficit that threatened agriculture and population growth.

Today, Israel exports water to Jordan and the Palestinian Authority from its surplus.

The turnaround was deliberate. Over decades, Israel combined drip irrigation, wastewater recycling, and desalination into a national strategy that reversed a 1-billion-cubic-metre annual deficit. A country of fewer than 10 million people now shares those solutions worldwide, even as critics portray Israel as a water-scarce desert nation with nothing to offer beyond perpetual crisis.

In 1959, Israeli engineer Simcha Blass developed drip irrigation, delivering water directly to each plant’s root zone rather than flooding fields. Commercialized through Netafim in 1965, the technology reduces water consumption by up to 60% and increases crop yields by up to 90% compared to traditional methods. Israeli irrigation technologies now help feed an estimated 1 billion people globally, from Italy and Turkey to India.

Israel recycles approximately 86% of its wastewater for agricultural reuse, the highest rate of any country on earth. Spain, the next closest, recycles 17%. Half of all irrigation water used in Israel is treated wastewater that would otherwise have been discarded.

Israeli advances have cut desalination costs to one-third of 1990s levels. IDE Technologies, an Israeli firm, has deployed roughly 400 desalination plants across 40 countries, producing 2 million cubic metres of potable water per day globally. The company also designed the Carlsbad plant in San Diego, delivering nearly 50 million gallons per day, enough to serve approximately 400,000 people.

Israeli company Watergen pulls drinking water from the air using solar energy, operating in 65 countries including rural villages in Central Africa, hospitals in Gaza, and wildfire response vehicles in California. Tel Aviv ranks among the top cities globally for clean technology innovation, with Israeli AgTech startups deploying drones to assess tree health across farms in Africa and Asia.

The contrast with neighbors is stark. Iran is facing a water crisis so severe its leadership has warned dams could run dry. In August 2025, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to share Israel’s desalination and recycling expertise with the Iranian people once free from the current regime. India’s Prime Minister Modi sought out Israeli drip irrigation and desalination technology as Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2006, one of the earliest steps in what became a deep India-Israel technology partnership. The World Bank projects global food production will need to increase 70% or more over coming decades, a gap Israeli firms are explicitly targeting.

“Over 2 billion people live in water-stressed regions around the globe, and that number is expected to reach as high as 5 billion by 2050,” the Washington Institute for Near East Policy noted in its analysis of Israel’s water-saving innovations.

Israel had no natural water advantage. It built one. Calls to isolate the country rarely reckon with what that would mean for the millions worldwide who depend on Israeli water technology.