**5. Conclusions**



**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0817/9/12/1012/s1. Table S1: Correlation Matrix of physico-chemical and bacteriological parameters in water and biofilm of the eight sampling sites; Table S2: Sampling location and number of isolates obtained from each site from six sampling campaigns in 2012–2014; Figure S1: Sampling sites of the eight hospitals (A-H) and Al-Quds University (AQU) in the West Bank, Palestine; Figure S2: *Legionella* plate counts vs. *L. pneumophila* specific PCR-detection in cold water samples and vs. culture-based positive biofilm swabs; Figure S3: Correlation of Legionella plate counts of cold versus hot water; Figure S4: MLVA 8(12)-genotype diversity (number of genotypes/number of strains retrieved per sampling site) vs. the average percentage of *Legionella* positive biofilm swabs (by cultivation) per sampling site.

**Author Contributions:** A.R.Z. performed sample acquisition and analyses, strain isolation, data analyses and contributed to drafting of the manuscript. D.M.B.; M.S.; I.B.; and M.G.H. designed the work, contributed to data evaluation and drafting of the manuscript. S.B.; M.P.; A.S. and H.A. contributed to sampling, and sample and strain analyses. All authors read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This work was supported by DFG grants (HO 930/5-1; HO 930/5-2) and the Hildegard-Elisabeth-Foundation.

**Acknowledgments:** We thank the administration of the hospitals for allowing us to collect the samples. We thank the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) for helpful support, information, and data. We are grateful to Dalia Abu Hilal, Verena Maiberg and Josefin Koch for technical assistance. Christian Lück and the National Consulting Laboratory for *Legionella* kindly provided the Sequence Types of the isolates.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
