Israeli-Developed 'Skunk Water' Weapon, First Used on Palestinian Protesters, Now Exported to Police Forces Worldwide

A liquid engineered to smell like sewage and rot has a documented eighteen-year record: first tested on Israel's own police riot lines, then turned on Palestinian demonstrators, then packaged for export.

According to the chronology laid out by Al Jazeera, skunk water was developed in 2004 by the Israeli company Odortec working with Israel Police's Technological Development Department. It is classified as a "scent-based non-lethal weapon," fired from water cannon or dropped from drones. It was first deployed against Palestinian protesters in the West Bank village of Nilin in 2008.

From there its use spread. Demonstrations in Bilin, Kafr Qaddum, and Nabi Saleh became regular sites of skunk-water deployment, the record shows. In 2011, Israeli forces reportedly fired tear gas and skunk water on unarmed mourners leaving the burial of a 28-year-old killed by the Israeli army in Nabi Saleh, as they walked toward a village spring the account describes as having been taken over by the adjacent settlement of Halamish. Similar incidents were reported there again in 2012 and 2013.

In 2013, activists and journalists covering protests against the closure of Shuhada Street in Hebron were sprayed. In 2014, Israeli police drove skunk trucks through Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, hitting homes, streets, and schools; four schools in at-Tur were struck, and roughly 4,500 students stayed home because of the smell, according to the account. By 2018, during the Great March of Return, the Israeli military was using a drone called Shoko to drop skunk water on Gaza protesters from plastic bags.

Most recently, a Gaza City resident told AJ+ that in late September a foul smell spread overnight across the city and that residents traced it to packets dropped from aircraft. That account rests on a single witness statement; it has not been independently verified with footage or documentation.

The sales pitch

When skunk water was first deployed in 2008, Israeli police were reported to have "high hopes" of turning it into a commercial product for law enforcement abroad. Police superintendent David Ben Harosh appeared on air that year holding a bottle of the liquid.

"It's totally harmless, you can even drink it."

The export record that followed is specific. In 2007, the company Beit Alfa Technologies supplied skunk water to the South African Police Service along with water cannons and riot gear, equipment later used against demonstrators during the 2015 Fees Must Fall protests. In 2017, India's Central Reserve Police Force tested the liquid for crowd control in Jammu and Kashmir. The Who Profits Research Center says it was separately approached by a company seeking to buy the product from Odortec for resale to Colombian police. In the United States, the firm Mistral Security supplies skunk water and, according to the account, uses on its own website a photograph of Israeli forces deploying the liquid against Palestinians in the West Bank as marketing material.

The pattern described is consistent: a tool built to make Palestinian streets, homes, and schools unlivable, then marketed to other security forces as a proven product.