Gaza Is Dying Of Thirst

Water will soon run out in Gaza. The total blockade imposed by Israel after the Hamas attack on October 7 has disrupted the arrival of drinking water distributed to Gaza via a pipeline from Israeli territory. Israel is also blocking access to electricity and fuel to the Gaza Strip, making it impossible to operate Gaza’s three desalination plants. In addition to disrupting supplies, the Israeli bombings have hit “numerous facilities, both for water supply and storage and sanitation,” and are preventing the movement of tankers that are still circulating fuel, says Pilar Orduña, head of humanitarian assistance at Oxfam Intermón . Orduña complains that this means that there are hardly any resources left in a region that already suffers from severe water shortages and sanitation deficits.

“My mission tomorrow is essentially to get water,” laments Sami, a Palestinian UNICEF worker in Gaza, in an audio recording distributed by the UN fund. The man, who had to leave his home in the north of the Gaza Strip with his wife and five children, is seeking shelter from air strikes by the Israeli forces in a 70 square meter room where 17 people live together. “Children and adults, all together and no running water… Today I had to collect water in buckets, water that is actually intended for bathing, because we can’t use it for anything else. “We drank from the bottles we had, but we’ve already run out,” he adds. Rania (not her real name), an Amnesty International aid worker living as a refugee in Rafah, also said in statements distributed by that organization that she was having difficulty “finding water.” “It’s very hard to find and very expensive,” she explains.

Even before the current conflict, Palestinians faced severe water shortages and a very poor water supply system. According to a 2022 World Health Organization (WHO) cross-sectoral needs assessment, 82% of Gazans received water through private water transport; 13% were supplied via public taps; only 4% had tap water at home and 1% had to consume bottled water. The three desalination plants, which are no longer in operation, produced 21 million liters of drinking water daily, according to UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

Gazans refilled water in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip last Tuesday.HAITHAM IMAD (EFE)

But now “the drinking water has practically run out,” complains Oxfam. And the agreement reached between Israel and the USA to allow the import of food, water or medicine from Egypt will “not be enough” to meet the population’s consumption needs, the organizations agree. According to calculations by the UN Water and Energy Cluster, there are currently only “three liters of water available per day per person” in Gaza. “A five-minute shower uses about 100 liters of water,” notes Orduña.

In this situation of scarcity, the owners of water treatment plants, most of which run on solar energy, are “the biggest suppliers,” he continues. But the “price has increased fivefold,” say Oxfam aid workers in Gaza.

The main priority

The difficulty of obtaining water, according to the various NGOs interviewed, has led many people to draw water from agricultural wells, provided they have enough fuel or energy to activate the pumps. However, 81% of the water withdrawn from Gaza’s aquifer does not meet the minimum quality standards required by the WHO. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics puts this percentage at 97%. UNICEF has denounced that some people have been forced to drink sea water.

Despite the lack of all basic needs, the most urgent task in the Palestinian enclave is therefore to find water. “We are at a point where it is our top priority,” says Guillemette Thomas, Médecins Sans Frontières coordinator in Palestine – a claim shared by all the organizations surveyed. “It is estimated that 60% of Gaza’s residents, more than a million people, live outdoors, without access to water or healthcare.”

Two men fill the water tanks of a house in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip.SAID KHATIB (AFP)

The problem doesn’t just affect consumption. “The five sewage treatment plants in Gaza had to close,” explains Orduña. The result is that “untreated sewage is discharged into the sea” and that “solid waste accumulates” in some streets, increasing the risk of outbreaks of life-threatening infectious diseases such as cholera or diarrhea, which can be particularly serious in young children. Thomas explains: “In addition to the seriously injured, we risk witnessing a wave of illnesses linked to poor living conditions,” such as diarrhea, respiratory and skin infections, and dehydration.