Even before Israel’s latest campaign of bombing began two and a half weeks ago, Gaza was facing a multilayered water crisis. The territory had suffered decades of underdevelopment of water infrastructure.
Gaza has never been integrated with Israel’s mains water system. Instead, in times of relative calm, 80% of Gaza’s water came from a part of the coastal aquifer, a massive geological formation that stretches along the eastern Mediterranean coast from northern Egypt through Gaza and into Israel. A further 7% was provided by desalination plants, and 13% was bought from Israel’s state water company, Mekorot, according to Shaddad Attili, a former head of the Palestinian Water Authority.
Until the 1990s the aquifer provided the Gaza Strip’s inhabitants with drinkable water. But decades of over-abstraction have led to its contamination with sea water, and it is also contaminated with wastewater and agricultural runoff. Now 97% of this water no longer meets World Health Organization (WHO)
standards, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
The repeated devastation caused by Israeli bombing and embargos on the materials needed to rebuild have left Gaza with a barely functioning piped water network. The solution for most people was a network of about 100 privately operated water desalination plants, according to a 2022 report by the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. These would pump water from wells throughout the strip, treat it and sell it, at a price of about $7 per 1,000 litres, to customers who would store it in water tanks in their homes.
But even this water could pose a hazard. Only about half of these private desalination plants operated with a licence, Al Mezan reported. Chemical analysis by Gaza’s ministry of health in 2021 found eight out of 38 samples did not reach Palestinian standards. Microbiological tests found samples contaminated with coliform bacteria, including faecal coliform bacteria. In 2020, the UN Development Programme reported that 26% of all childhood diseases in Gaza were water-related.
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Many of these problems are a result of Israel’s longstanding occupation and blockade of Gaza. Crucial components for the repair and maintenance of Gaza’s fresh and wastewater networks, as well as for its desalination facilities, have been banned.