Beyond Missiles: Why Israel’s Civilian Infrastructure Needs Stronger Defenses

When five major desalination plants went offline, Israeli households still had water. But the disruption exposed how quickly a natural event can test the country’s civilian defenses.

The plants stopped operating after unusually high seawater turbidity, apparently caused by microalgae carried north from the Nile Delta. Some facilities resumed operations, but three remained offline on Wednesday. Authorities protected residential supplies, instructed municipalities to reduce nonessential consumption and temporarily cut agricultural water in parts of the country.

The consequences could be especially serious for farmers in the Negev. They warned that crops at the height of the growing season could suffer irreversible damage within a day.

The episode demonstrated the resilience of Israel’s water system. The country maintained household supplies despite losing most of its desalination capacity, a notable achievement for a dry state that once depended heavily on rainfall. Yet that success also revealed the system’s concentration. A small number of large plants produce much of the country’s drinking water, and each depends on usable seawater, electricity and functioning pumps.

A recent preprint by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Max Planck Institutes modeled scenarios in which drought, electricity failures, war, cyberattacks and marine pollution occur together. The study has not undergone peer review, but it poses a direct question about national planning: is Israel preparing for several systems to fail at once, or is each ministry still planning for isolated emergencies?

The editorial argues that national security must include more than armies, borders, intelligence and missile defense. It must also keep electricity flowing, hospitals operating, food reaching supermarkets and protected spaces available when sirens sound. Recent State Comptroller’s Reports identified weaknesses in those areas, including a January finding that one-third of Israelis lacked adequate access to standard protected spaces.