Less than twenty years ago, Israel was running out of water. After five years of drought, the Sea of Galilee, the country’s great reservoir, dropped year after year. In 2008, the Water Authority launched a campaign people still remember: “Israel is drying up” (ישראל מתייבשת). On television, celebrities’ faces cracked like earth without rain. Household consumption fell by almost a fifth.
But the answer already existed, and it had been born in the desert.
On August 10, 1965, the engineer Simcha Blass, his son and Kibbutz Hatzerim, in the Negev, signed the agreement that founded Netafim. The kibbutz was short of water and its soil was poor. Blass’s idea: give the water to the root, drop by drop, instead of watering the sand. The first commercial dripper came out in 1966. Drip irrigation is now used all over the world.
Blass’s idea: give the water to the root, drop by drop, instead of watering the sand.
## 80% of wastewater reused
Israel now reuses more than 80% of its wastewater, mostly to irrigate farmland: the highest rate in the world, according to Israel’s State Comptroller. France’s Court of Audit, in March 2024, offered a comparison: 14% in Spain, 8% in Italy, less than 1% in France.
The country also learned to drink the sea. Five large desalination plants line the Mediterranean coast: Hadera, Sorek, Palmachim, Ashdod and Ashkelon. They supply about four out of five glasses of drinking water.
## The National Water Carrier, both ways
In 1964, Israel opened the National Water Carrier: water from the Sea of Galilee flowed to the center and south of the country. In late December 2022, the national water company Mekorot and the Water Authority launched the “reverse carrier”: desalinated seawater can now travel the other way and flow back up to the lake, up to 120 million cubic meters a year, to support it in dry years. A one-billion-shekel investment. In October 2025, with the lake running low, the Water Authority decided to use it for the first time.
The country that was running out of water can now send water back to its own lake. The desert hasn’t moved. The water has.
*Sources: [France’s Court of Audit, via Maire-info](https://www.maire-info.com/eau-et-assainissement/recyclage-des-eaux-usees-la-reut-peine-%C3%A0-decoller-selon-les-industriels-article-29041); [Israel’s State Comptroller, water report, January 2024](https://library.mevaker.gov.il/sites/DigitalLibrary/Documents/2024/2024.01-74A/EN/2024-74A-304-Water-Taktzir-EN.pdf); [ISRAEL21c, the 2008 campaign](https://www.israel21c.org/?p=120451); [Wikipedia, Simcha Blass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simcha_Blass); [JNS, the share of desalination](https://www.jns.org/israel-sees-one-of-the-driest-winters-in-a-century/); [Globes, the reverse carrier](https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-reverse-water-carrier-launched-to-refill-kinneret-1001433880); [Jerusalem Post, October 2025](https://www.jpost.com/environment-and-climate-change/article-870841).*
