Survivors of Israeli bombardment of Gaza fight bitter for a drink of water (Anatolia)

GAZA – Just 48 hours after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Israeli soldiers are shown in a video cutting off water supplies from Israel to the Gaza Strip.

This came in implementation of the decision of the Israeli Minister of Infrastructure, Israel Katz, to "immediately cut off water and energy from the Gaza Strip," as part of a package of sanctions taken by the occupation in response to the operation in which more than 1200,<> Israeli soldiers and settlers were killed.

More than 42 days after the ongoing war on Gaza, the death of 12,<> martyrs and the destruction of various vital facilities, what does the water situation in the Strip look like? And how do the population get it?

Water Resources in Gaza before the Aggression

The Gaza Strip has been suffering for decades from the water scarcity crisis, as a result of the blockade and occupation restrictions that hit the infrastructure, until the per capita share of water, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, reached 26.8 liters per day for the year 2022.

This is a small figure compared to the UN recognition of the right of everyone to 100 litres per day, including personal and domestic use.

Before the aggression, the Gaza Strip relied on three main sources of water:

  • Subterranean wells

It is used to extract groundwater from the ground through pumps powered by electricity or fuel, through which Gazans extracted 187.6 million cubic meters of water, which constitutes an overpumping, as this amount amounted to 3 times the rainfall recharge of the aquifer.

Underground wells suffer from pollution by sewage intrusion and seawater intrusion that cause high salinity.

The Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) reports that 97% of Gaza's groundwater does not meet global potable water quality standards.

The ownership of underground wells in the Gaza Strip is divided between central wells managed by municipalities and used to pump water to homes, and personal wells used to irrigate crops in agricultural areas, or to supply homes with water and compensate for their interruption from municipalities.

  • Desalination plants

Several international organizations have established seawater desalination plants throughout the Gaza Strip, in Deir al-Balah, al-Sudaniya, and areas in the southern Gaza Strip.

In addition to the personal desalination plants built as for-profit projects, the desalination plants contributed to supplying the Gaza Strip with 5.7 million cubic meters of water in 2022, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

  • Pipelines coming from Israel

The Israeli water company Mekorot supplies the Gaza Strip with 8 million cubic meters of water annually, and municipalities mix it with groundwater wells to increase the amount available to homes, and this water was completely cut off on the ninth of last October.


The reality of water in the Gaza Strip during the aggression

The continuous Israeli aggression on Gaza, the cutting off of all water, electricity and fuel supplies, and the destructive bombardment led to the collapse of the per capita share of water per day, reaching less than 3 liters compared to 26.8 liters per day before the aggression, as a result of the decrease in water production capacity by 95%.

The sector is witnessing a real war of disruption with the inability to operate desalination plants, and many municipal wells out of service due to power cuts and lack of fuel, with more than a million people displaced towards the south and large numbers of people crowded into schools and shelters.

  • Access to water in the southern Gaza Strip

The southern areas of the Gaza Strip suffer from a severe water crisis, despite the fact that international organizations have moved to work in these southern areas and the occupation has declared it a "safe zone" and its efforts to forcibly displace the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to them under aerial bombardment and ground invasion.

Hassan (27 years old) from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, spoke to Al Jazeera Net about his daily suffering to obtain water since the start of the aggression, and provided a brief picture of the water sources now available in the south, which are as follows:

  • Personal wells

Dozens of wells have stopped operating as electricity cuts and fuel runs out, and some Khan Yunis residents receive small amounts of water by sharing a generator or enough fuel to run the well owner for a few minutes.

  • Desalination plants

All drinking water desalination plants stopped working completely in the southern Gaza Strip, as a result of power outages and running out of fuel, and a number of plants struggled to remain in service until the first weeks of the aggression, by reducing working hours and rationing sales to smaller numbers of residents, but the interruption of fuel supplies eventually led to their outage.

Municipalities in the southern Gaza Strip are currently supplying a number of desalination plants with limited quantities of fuel to enable them to operate and provide citizens with water, while these citizens are forced to walk long distances and wait for 6-10 hours to get 20 liters of water at a rate of once every two weeks.

  • Network of Municipalities

The municipalities of the south, in coordination with the United Nations and international organizations, operate their wells at a rate of 4-5 hours a day on an intermittent week, to provide hundreds of thousands of homes and housing units with limited quantities of water for exclusively domestic uses, which are unsuitable for drinking.

  • Seawater

Many citizens of the southern Gaza Strip have recently turned to bottling water from the sea, and walking it long distances to their homes, to be used in toilets, washing and bathing, while others are trying to desalinate it by evaporating using wood fire, but these attempts have so far not achieved tangible results.


Water in the northern Gaza Strip

Hundreds of thousands of citizens remain in their homes in the northern Gaza Strip, especially in Jabalia refugee camp and neighborhoods east and west of Gaza City, despite the continued waves of heavy shelling.

Adnan (30 years old) from Jabalia camp detailed to "Al Jazeera Net" the reality of water in the northern Gaza Strip, and ways to obtain it in light of the escalation of the continuous aggression.

He says that the desalination plants continued to operate until the first week of the ongoing aggression on Gaza, and continued to distribute water to homes in a rationed manner and in limited quantities, before stopping work due to running out of fuel.

He explained that water sources have been completely cut off, with the exception of some municipal wells, which operate for 3 to 4 hours intermittently and supply a number of neighborhoods with water once a week, which is groundwater unfit for human consumption, but it has become scarce, and in the absence of alternatives, the only source of drinking water despite its salinity.

Reliance on these wells took place with the tightening of the Israeli siege and aggression on the northern Gaza Strip in particular, and the evacuation of international organizations to their offices in Gaza and the north of Gaza and the abandonment of their responsibilities there.

Source : Al Jazeera