Israel's refusal to renew a key water supply agreement with Jordan reflects a growing "weaponisation" of water in the region, experts have told The New Arab, after Israeli officials linked future supplies to warmer diplomatic relations with Amman.
The warning comes after Israeli media reported that Benjamin Netanyahu's government has refused to extend a 2021 agreement supplying Jordan with an additional 50 million cubic metres (MCM) of water annually, amid tensions over Jordan's criticism of Israel's war on Gaza and its opposition to Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli media also reported that the UAE was seeking to broker a trilateral summit in Abu Dhabi involving Israel, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates in an attempt to resolve the dispute.
According to the reports, the meeting would discuss a new water agreement under which Israel would continue supplying Jordan with an additional 50 MCM of water each year, alongside the 50 MCM already provided under the 1994 peace treaty.
The parties are also expected to discuss a broader water-for-energy arrangement under which Israel would build a desalination plant supplying both countries, while Jordan would develop a solar energy field providing electricity to both Jordan and Israel.
However, Israeli officials have also suggested the talks would seek to improve diplomatic ties, with one unnamed official quoted by Israeli media saying Israel expected "warmer relations" in return for supplying Jordan with additional water.
The reports come after Israel's Energy Minister Eli Cohen reportedly refused to renew the agreement despite pressure from the United States, which had praised Jordan's role in intercepting Iranian drones, because of remarks by Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi criticising Israel.
Safadi has been among the region's most outspoken critics of Israel's war on Gaza, which many legal experts and rights organisations say amounts to genocide, as well as its expanding settlement activity and de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank .
Jordan has also played a leading role in international efforts to expand recognition of a Palestinian state, a campaign strongly opposed by Israel.
According to Jemima Oakey, research fellow at the Carboun Institute, the dispute "fits into a broader pattern in which regional water cooperation has become increasingly vulnerable to geopolitical tensions."
Speaking to The New Arab , Oakey said Jordan was particularly vulnerable because it is "one of the most water-scarce countries in the world", with just 61 cubic metres of renewable water available per person each year, compared with the UN water scarcity threshold of 500 cubic metres.
She said the crisis is being driven by a combination of severe network losses, rapid population growth, successive refugee influxes, heavy agricultural demand and climate change, which is reducing rainfall while increasing water demand during hotter summers.
Jordan is attempting to address the crisis through a planned 300 MCM desalination plant in Aqaba , but Oakey warned that water would increasingly become a geopolitical tool across the region.
"This fits into a broader pattern in which regional water cooperation has become increasingly vulnerable to geopolitical tensions," she said.
"With climate change, water is likely to become an even more strategic resource in regional diplomacy," she added.
As a result, "Israel's position as the dominant upstream water power in the Jordan River Basin may become even more significant," she said. "This could make future negotiations over shared water resources both more difficult and more politically sensitive."
The additional water agreement was signed in 2021 under Israel's then-prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, doubling the amount of water Israel supplies Jordan from 50 MCM to 100 MCM annually.
Under the deal, Jordan later requested a five-year extension and an increase in the additional allocation to 80 MCM, according to Israeli media. However, Israel has reportedly not supplied the additional water since November 2025 after Cohen stopped renewing the agreement.
Israeli media reported that the refusal has fuelled growing anger in Amman and raised concerns that water, which had largely remained insulated from political disputes since the 1994 peace treaty, is increasingly being used as diplomatic leverage.
The latest dispute follows the collapse of several regional water cooperation initiatives in recent years.
Plans for the long-delayed Red Sea-Dead Sea water project stalled amid declining political support, while the Israeli-Jordanian-Emirati water-for-energy agreement was effectively frozen following the outbreak of Israel's war on Gaza.
That agreement would have seen Israel supply Jordan with around 200 MCM of desalinated water annually in exchange for 600 megawatts of Jordanian solar power, with the project backed by Emirati renewable energy company Masdar.