Mohammad Al Shanti is forced to travel nearly four miles to Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza to fill up plastic bottles with water. It\u2019s only enough for his family\u2019s most basic needs. <\/p>\n
Finding clean water is becoming an all-consuming \u2013 and increasingly difficult \u2013 challenge for many Gazans. <\/p>\n
Hamas\u2019 brutal attacks in Israel on October 7 killed at least 1,400 people and the group took more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli authorities. In the wake of the assault, Israel launched an aerial bombardment of Gaza that Palestinian health officials say has killed more than 5,000 people. Israel also announced a \u201ccomplete siege\u201d on the enclave, withholding vital supplies of water, food and fuel. <\/p>\n
Israel <\/strong>has since allowed some water to flow through one of the three pipelines that run into Gaza, but experts say it covers only a tiny percentage of the enclave\u2019s needs. Most of Gaza\u2019s water comes from local sources \u2013 but the fuel required to pump and clean it is fast running out. <\/p>\n As the water system collapses, some Gazans have been forced to drink dirty, salty water, sparking concerns of a health crisis and fears that people could start dying from dehydration. <\/p>\n Water production in Gaza is currently at 5% of normal levels, according to a UNICEF report from October 17, citing the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA). <\/p>\n Gazans are now living on less than 3 liters of water a day, according to the UN, far below the World Health Organization\u2019s (WHO\u2019s) recommended 50 liters as the absolute minimum needed to meet basic needs, including drinking, cooking and hygiene. <\/p>\n \u201cThe only water people have is essentially non-potable seawater mixed with sewage,\u201d said Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Some are being forced to drink from farm wells, according to the non-profit Oxfam. <\/p>\n Mazen Ghunaim, head of the PWA, said that without large-scale intervention, the lack of water will trigger a \u201chumanitarian catastrophe.\u201d <\/p>\n There was a glimmer of hope this weekend when the first convoy of aid trucks loaded with water, food and medical supplies entered south Gaza through the Rafah crossing, on the border with Egypt. <\/p>\n These first aid efforts are \u201cjust the initial drop in the ocean,\u201d said Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO\u2019s representative for the West Bank and Gaza. <\/p>\n One vital supply missing from the aid convoys has been fuel. Without it, Gaza\u2019s water system has crumbled. <\/p>\n \u201cFuel is water,\u201d said Hall of CSIS. \u201cCutting off fuel is cutting off water.\u201d <\/p>\n For Gazans, no power means taps have run dry. \u201cEven if you are lucky and have a well, you will not be able to pump (water) to high floors because we don\u2019t have electricity,\u201d Al Shanti said. <\/p>\n Many of the water trucks Gazans rely on to fill water containers are unable to reach people\u2019s homes because they lack fuel, and because of the bombardment, said Omar Shaban, founder and director of the Gaza-based independent think tank PalThink for Strategic Studies. <\/p>\n Making water drinkable also relies on fuel. <\/p>\n All five wastewater treatment plants and two of the three desalination plants have stopped working. The enclave\u2019s last remaining major desalination plant, which had been shut down for almost a week, resumed operations on Saturday but is at less than 7% of its usual capacity. While some smaller desalination units remain operational, these are local and far from sufficient. <\/p>\n Gaza\u2019s fuel supplies could be exhausted in as little as 48 to 72 hours, Ghunaim, from the PWA, said on Monday. <\/p>\n Concerns are mounting about disease. People are resorting to filling up containers and storing water as they try to eke out supplies. \u201cThat water can become re-contaminated so quickly,\u201d Schwab said. Sewage is accumulating in the streets and displaced Gazans are crowding into shelters that lack adequate sanitation. <\/p>\n Experts fear the spread of waterborne diseases like cholera and dysentery, which would put more pressure on a health system already teetering on the edge of collapse. <\/p>\n Hospitals face \u201can imminent water and sanitation crisis,\u201d Peeperkorn, from the WHO, said. Some have so little water, they are struggling to sterilize surgical equipment.\u00a0 <\/p>\n However, chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, has since suggested a softening of this position. \u201cWe will make sure there will be fuel in places where they need fuel to treat civilians. We will not allow the fuel for Hamas so they can continue fighting against the citizens of Israel,\u201d he said in a live TV address Tuesday afternoon. But he shared no details of when or how they would distribute the fuel. <\/p>\n International agencies warn that without fuel, safe drinking water will run out. \u201cPeople will start dying of severe dehydration, among them young children,\u201d said Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. <\/p>\n Access to clean water has long been one of the hardest challenges for those living in the Gaza Strip. The 140-square-mile territory is one of most densely populated places on Earth. <\/p>\n Gaza has three main sources of water: desalination plants, pipelines that carry in water purchased from Israel and groundwater wells. <\/p>\n Most of Gaza\u2019s water comes from a coastal aquifer, a body of underground water that stretches along the coastline of the eastern Mediterranean from Egypt\u2019s Sinai Peninsula up to Israel. <\/p>\n Around 97% is undrinkable; it\u2019s salty, brackish, and contaminated by untreated wastewater and pollution. <\/p>\n The aquifer has been over-extracted to serve Gaza\u2019s growing population. More than twice the amount of water is removed than is naturally replenished each year, and as the levels of freshwater drop, salty water from the Mediterranean has seeped in. <\/p>\n The climate crisis is also having an impact. Sea level rise will increase the salinity of the groundwater and more intense and frequent extreme weather events such as heat and drought further threaten water resources. <\/p>\n Israel\u2019s control over Gaza\u2019s water system has made the situation harder, Hall said, especially in terms of parts allowed into the enclave. <\/p>\n Items that are considered \u201cdual use\u201d \u2013 meaning they could also be used for military purposes \u2013 require special permission to be brought into Gaza. \u201cGetting anything built, either in the West Bank or Gaza, in terms of water infrastructure is really, really difficult,\u201d Hall said. <\/p>\n Even before the conflict, many experts were saying the water situation would be \u201ccatastrophic in the future,\u201d Hall said. <\/p>\n For people in Gaza, there is no escape as the crisis becomes more acute. Water shortages happen in conflicts around the world, but the reality is a lot of people just leave, Hall said. \u201cWhen water dries up, they move and Gazans can\u2019t move.\u201d <\/p>\n For Um Haitham Hassan, who is living in an UNRWA tent in the southern city of Khan Younis, the situation is becoming untenable \u2013 she cannot wash her family\u2019s clothes or bathe her children. There is no water, the fuel is \u201ccompletely cut off,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n \u201cWhere do we get water?\u201d she asked. <\/p>\n\n Mohammad Al Shanti is forced to travel nearly four miles to Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza to fill up plastic bottles with water. It\u2019s only enough for his family\u2019s most basic needs. Finding clean water is becoming an all-consuming \u2013 and increasingly difficult \u2013 challenge for many Gazans. Hamas\u2019 brutal attacks in Israel on October <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10573,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} A \u2018humanitarian catastrophe\u2019 <\/h2>\n
\u2018Fuel is water\u2019<\/h2>\n
A crisis decades in the making<\/h2>\n
\u2018We have been humiliated\u2019<\/h2>\n