Weakened by hunger, many gasans shake a ruined landscape every day to transport all their consumption and washing water consumption – a painful load which is still well below the levels necessary to keep people healthy.
Even if global attention has turned to famine in Gaza, where after 22 months of a devastating Israeli military campaign, a world hunger instructor says that a famine scenario takes place, the water crisis is just as serious according to the aid groups.
Although water comes from small desalination units managed by help agencies, most are taken from wells in a brackish aquifer which has been more polluted by wastewater and chemicals that suify the rubble, distributing diarrhea and hepatitis.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency responsible for coordinating aid in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, says that it operates two water pipelines in the Gaza Strip, providing millions of liters of water per day.
Palestinian waters say they have not worked recently.
Israel has stopped all water and electricity supplies in Gaza at the start of the war, but has regained a food later, although the pipeline network in the territory has been seriously damaged.
Most water and sanitation infrastructures have been destroyed and the aquifer pumps often rest on the electricity of small generators – for which fuel is rarely available.
Cogat said the Israeli army has enabled the coordination of aid organizations to use equipment to maintain water infrastructure throughout the conflict.
Moaz Mukhaimar, 23 and a student at university before the war, said he had to walk for about a kilometer, queuing for two hours, to get water. He often spends three times a day, bringing him to the family tent on a bumpy floor on a small metal hand card.
“How long should we stay like that?” He asked, pulling two largest cans of very brackish water to use for cleaning and two smaller water of drinking.
His mother, Umm Moaz, 53, said that the water he collects is necessary for the extended family of 20 people living in their small group of tents in Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Central Strip.
“Children continue to come and come and are hot. They continue to want to drink. Who knows if tomorrow we can fill up again,” she said.
Their water struggle is reproduced in the tiny and crowded territory where almost everyone lives in temporary shelters or tents without drain or hygiene factories and not enough water to drink, cook and wash as the disease spreads.
The United Nations claim that the minimum level of emergency of water consumption per person is 15 liters per day to drink, cooking, cleaning and washing. Average daily consumption in Israel is around 247 liters per day according to the Israeli group of B’tselem rights.
Bushra Khalidi, the lead in humanitarian policy of the Oxfam aid agency in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israeli said that average consumption in Gaza was now 3 to 5 liters per day.
Oxfam said last week that the diseases prevented and treatable from water “tore Gaza”, the rates reported increasing by almost 150% in the last three months.
Israel criticizes Hamas for suffering in Gaza and says that it provides adequate aid to the 2.3 million inhabitants of the territory.
Way queue
“The scarcity of water increases permanently every day and people ration essentially between them, they want to use water to drink, they want to use a lot for hygiene,” said Danish Malik, a global water and sanitation official for the Norwegian refugee council.
You just have to queue for water and wear it now for hours every day for many gasans, often involving jostling themselves with others for a place in the queue. The nuts sometimes broke out, say the gasans.
Water collection is often child work because their parents are looking for food or other necessities.
“Children lost their childhood and have become carriers of plastic containers, run behind water vehicles or go far in remote areas to fill them for their families,” said Munther Salem, head of water resources with Gaza Water and Environment Quality Authority.
With water so difficult to obtain, many people living near the beach are washing in the sea.
A new gas pipeline funded by the United Arab Emirates is planned, to serve 600,000 people in southern Gaza of a desalination plant in Egypt. But it could take several weeks to be connected.
Much more is necessary, depending on the help agencies. Unicef spokesman James Elder said that long-term deprivation became fatal. “Famine and dehydration are no longer side effects of this conflict. These are front line effects.”
Khalidi of Oxfam said that a ceasefire and unhindered access for aid agencies were necessary to resolve the crisis.
“Otherwise, we will see people die from the most preventable diseases in Gaza – which is already happening before our eyes.”
