Israeli siege leaves Gaza without Clean Water, causing disease

Gazans struggle to receive just a few litres of water a day and the little there is in the enclave is making people sick.

A man helps a toddler drink some water in the Gaza Strip. Picture: AFP

At Rami Hijjo’s home in Gaza City, showering is a luxury of the past. The taps are running dry and he spends hours each day trying to procure rationed drinking water that isn’t even clean enough to make tea.

“Sometimes the water is salty and the tea we prepare with it is murky,” said the father of three, a former humanitarian worker.

In Gaza, bombed and besieged for the past month, clean water is in critically short supply. Water production in the coastal enclave has collapsed to around 5 per cent of pre-war levels, according to the United Nations. The little water that Gaza has is making people sick, residents, the UN and healthcare workers say.

The situation is particularly dire in northern Gaza, the focus of Israeli military activity, where safe drinking water is no longer available and encirclement by Israeli troops means no more can get in.

Many are drinking whatever water they can find, often from wells contaminated by saltwater, chemicals and other pollutants.

The survival measures have life-threatening consequences — especially for children — in a territory where primary healthcare is already on the brink of collapse.

Hijjo, the father of three, initially fled south in the early days of the war, as Israel urged civilians to leave for their own safety. But bombing there pushed them back north. His family of five is allowed one gallon of drinking water a day from a distribution point, but he says even that isn’t safe.

“My children and other children in our building have been suffering from diarrhoea, most probably because of the water,” Hijjo says.

Water has become an expensive commodity. Four gallons of non-drinking water recently cost Hijjo $US50.

Lack of clean water can be catastrophic for children, says Toby Fricker, a spokesman for UNICEF. “Water-borne diseases have a huge impact on child health,” he said.

The UN children’s agency is leading humanitarian co-ordination for water and sanitation in the strip, and supports one of Gaza’s desalination plants.

Before the war, Gaza had three primary sources of water — desalination plants, three pipelines from Israel and a large number of wells. The conflict has disrupted them all, according to the U.N. and the local water management authority.

Since Hamas militants poured into Israel on October 7, killing 1400 people and taking hundreds of hostages to Gaza, Israel has carried out a bombing campaign and imposed a siege on the enclave that has made living conditions for the 2.2 million residents unbearable, locals and humanitarian organisations say. More than 10,000 people have been killed, the majority of them women and children, according to Hamas-controlled health authorities. Their figures don’t distinguish between militants and civilians.

Israel has blocked almost all water, food and medical supplies from entering the enclave.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected US pressure to agree to a humanitarian pause to let more aid in unless Palestinian militants free the over 240 hostages taken from Israel and held in Gaza.

The little humanitarian aid that is entering Gaza from the south, including bottled water, isn’t reaching the north, which is now encircled by Israeli troops and armoured units. Israel has blocked the enclave’s fuel supply, which is desperately needed for electricity to run basic services, from hospitals to water-treatment plants. The Gaza Strip’s only power station stopped operating weeks ago.

Over 2000 cubic metres of drinking water, along with chlorine tablets used for water purification, has entered Gaza through the border with Egypt on trucks carrying humanitarian aid.

The U.N. says the humanitarian aid reaching Gaza is a fraction of what is required. Before the war, about 500 truckloads of goods arrived daily in the enclave, the agency said. Around 560 trucks have entered the strip in the past month.

Only one of Gaza’s three desalination plants — the one supported by the UN — is currently operational because of a lack of fuel. The energy-intensive process turns seawater into drinking water and in normal times provides around 7 per cent of Gaza’s water needs. Before the war, 13 per cent of Gaza’s water was piped in. The rest came from public or privately owned wells.

In the aftermath of the assault by Hamas, which Israel and the U.S. consider a terrorist group, Israel suspended water delivery to Gaza. The water pipeline to the north remains closed.

Water is currently flowing through the other two pipelines, which connect to Gaza’s middle and south, according to Israel’s Ministry of Energy, which oversees the pipelines, and the water authority in Gaza. Still, lack of electricity and damage to water infrastructure caused by Israeli strikes has made it extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, to distribute water through the pipeline network, the UN and the local water management authority said.

The conditions mean residents of Gaza have an average of three litres of water per person a day — for drinking, cleaning and other purposes, according to the UN. In normal circumstances, daily personal water usage averages around 100 litres. Even in emergencies, the World Health Organisation says that people should have access to a minimum of 15 litres a day.

Gazans are rationing what water they have, prioritising drinking and cooking over sanitation and personal hygiene. Fights among residents sometimes break out at water trucks or other distribution points.

“People are queuing for hours for water that isn’t potable,” said Bushra Khalidi, who is in charge of policy in the Palestinian territories for Oxfam, an international aid agency. “To see people fighting over water — that is an indication of an alarming new phase for this crisis. It’s unheard of (in Gaza).” There is also a problem with the quality of the water. The groundwater pulled from wells is a mix of freshwater and saltwater, and often contains residual chemicals used in agriculture. With most wastewater-treatment plants in Gaza no longer functional, sewage is another potential source of contamination.

At least seven water facilities across the strip have been directly hit in the fighting, including two large water reservoirs, according to the UN. Local authorities warned there was an imminent risk of sewage overflowing from non-operational treatment plants.

People are already getting sick, with cramped living conditions in homes, shelters and hospitals facilitating the spread of diseases.

Khalidi had relatives and friends sheltering in a hospital in Gaza City who became ill last week. One of them vomited blood.

“They are pretty sure it was because of the water but they don’t know for sure because there is no healthcare,” Khalidi said. “It’s a disaster.” The situation is only marginally better in southern Gaza. Reema Atta, a young mother who fled south during the second week of the war, says her family uses well water just for cooking and cleaning. They buy desalinated water of uncertain quality, boiling it on wood-powered stoves to make it safer.

“This is what we do to make it possible to have a drink of water,” Atta says. Bottled water is so scarce that prices have increased fivefold, residents say. For many Gazans, it is a luxury they can’t afford. But Atta makes an exception for her two-year-old daughter.

“I save bottled mineral water solely for my baby,” she says. “It’s a simple precaution to ensure she has access to uncontaminated water.”

Suha Ma’ayeh contributed to this article

The Wall Street Journal