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'Getting Water Was Agony.' How Israel Has Deprived Gaza of Clean Water

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Ayah Victoria McKhail is a Palestinian writer based in Toronto with family in Gaza. Her writing has appeared in The Palestine Chronicle, The Globe and Mail, and the Literary Review of Canada, among other publications.

A mother washes her newborn baby's soiled diaper and sets it out to dry, since she has to reuse it with diapers in such short supply. A teenage boy who is trying to get his grandmother desperately needed medical attention struggles to push her in a wheelchair through the rubble of another destroyed street, to a makeshift medical center in place of a hospital that was bombed. A little girl jostles in a sea of famine-stricken people, her arms outstretched holding a pot, clamoring for a meal to bring to the tent she and her family are sheltering in.

Beneath the azure sky and the lapping waves of the Mediterranean Sea, such scenes have been the everyday realities for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for the past 15 months of Israel's war. Days into a tenuous cease-fire, an uneasy calm has fallen over the decimated enclave, but the circumstances remain dire. Among the ongoing challenges confronting Gaza's weary population of more than 2 million people is getting access to clean drinking water, as well as water for bathing, washing, cleaning and ablution.

It is a struggle Duaa Zeyad el-Hassani knows all too well. An educational sciences specialist, she's determined to pursue graduate studies in the near future. Following the destruction of her home in Gaza City by Israeli forces, she and the four other members of her family were displaced 14 times over the past year-plus. Currently, they're holed up in the home of her father's friend. In the autumn of 2023, when the Israeli military began demanding local residents flee to southern Gaza in the early weeks of the war, the el-Hassani family remained resolute: They would not, under any circumstances, leave. Having stayed in Gaza City the entire time, they've all gone several days without water.

"Obtaining water has been a great obstacle, particularly when we were sheltering in UNRWA schools," Duaa said in an interview, referring to the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, the lifeline for Palestinians in Gaza dependent on aid. "There was bombing everywhere, so it was dangerous for us to leave and approach the water tanks. At one point, the water tanks were bombed when families had gathered around them. So many people were martyred. Getting water was a story of agony."

There was bombing everywhere, so it was dangerous for us to leave and approach the water tanks. At one point, the water tanks were bombed when families had gathered around them.

- Duaa Zeyad el-Hassani

"Water is the basis of life," said her sister in Gaza, Esraa Zeyad el-Hassani, who also plans to pursue a master's degree and become a university lecturer. "Wherever there is water, there is life. But during the war, many rights were taken away from us. The most important of which is the right to water."

A recent report by Human Rights Watch corroborates how "Israeli authorities have deliberately obstructed Palestinians' access to the adequate amount of water required for survival" in Gaza throughout the military campaign that Israel launched after the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. It cites a standard established by the World Health Organization that an individual needs between 50 and 100 liters of water per day in order to ensure their "most basic needs are met." However, in protracted emergency situations, the minimum amount of water required is 15 liters of water per person, per day, for drinking and washing. "Yet, between October 2023 and September 2024, Israeli authorities' actions have deprived the majority of the more than 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza of access to even that bare minimum amount of water, which has contributed to death and widespread disease," according to the report. "For many in Gaza, much or all of the water they have had access to is not suitable for drinking."

Duaa recalls the sense of relief her family, desperate for fresh water, felt when it would rain heavily. "We quickly put out buckets, kettles and bowls to collect as much rainwater as we could," she said. But any reprieve that washed over them was temporary.

And drinking water unfit for human consumption has many health repercussions. "Sometimes, we're even forced to drink unclean water designated for bathing, which is known colloquially as salty water," said Esraa, which often led to dehydration, fatigue, stomach cramps and diarrhea. She described a sight that has become commonplace in Gaza: people trying desperately to find a health clinic or pharmacy to get medicine to treat these ailments. "We find long queues of people suffering from the same afflictions," she said, "and sometimes, there's no medicine available for treatment."

Palestinians in Jabalia, in northern Gaza, as they return to their houses after the announcement of the cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, January 19, 2025. (Photo by Ramzi Mahmud/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The overcrowding in places where people had Israeli bombardment has also resulted in the outbreak of disease. "At one point, we were in a classroom with five other families," she recounted. "Contagious skin diseases began to spread, such as blisters on the body, but also head lice, viral hepatitis and polio."

The deteriorating situation led the el-Hassani family to look for a liter of fuel, which typically costs $34 in Gaza—a staggering sum for most Palestinians—to run a generator to extract water from an underground well. But when they couldn't find fuel, they were forced to go to the Mediterranean coast to collect polluted sea water, which they had to use for all their needs, including drinking. Many Palestinians in Gaza rely on solar panels to power freshwater wells, weather permitting, and even makeshift solar-powered water filters to desalinate sea water.

Abir Hamza el-Khawaja worked in Gaza City as an early childhood education teacher prior to October 2023. She now lives in a tent in Khan Yunis, where she experiences firsthand how the scarcity of water is affecting everyone around her, especially children. "Many women tell me their children have been suffering from transporting water in jerrycans or pails from considerable distances to their tents," she said. With no wells near their displacement camps, these children must walk miles in some cases, and wait in long lines, just for a bucket of water. "Gaza's children have lost their right to be children," she said.

Ahed al-Khatib, the founder and director of a Palestinian charity, the Bureij Association for the Rehabilitation of the Handicapped, is seeing this reality take hold in his own family. His eight-year-old nephew, Amir, makes frequent trips to fetch water, at the cost of $1 a gallon, with a trolley he pushes on dirt roads lined with destroyed buildings, some of which are spray-painted with the names of people who were killed there by Israeli airstrikes. He decried the struggle in Gaza simply "to obtain clean drinking water," noting that the U.N. General Assembly recognized the human right to water and sanitation in 2010. He implored the international community "to take immediate action to rectify this untenable situation."

Water is the basis of life. Wherever there is water, there is life. But during the war, many rights were taken away from us. The most important of which is the right to water.

- Esraa Zeyad el-Hassani

Wasim Ahmad al-Kharoubi is trying to survive in his partially destroyed home in Gaza City, where there is no reliable clean drinking water. Israeli airstrikes have destroyed water infrastructure and wells, while damaging sanitation infrastructure, causing untreated wastewater and sewage to overflow into the streets and the sea. "There have been times where absolutely no water was available," he said. The only option is to trek for miles to a faraway water collection point. "Scores of people would be standing in queues," he said. "Often, the supply couldn't meet the demand, so I'd return home without a drop."

Esraa Zeyad el-Hassani knows this arduous ordeal all too well. Her brother, Emad, has had the same experience. She stressed how difficult it is to "travel for lengthy distances to fetch water when there's a famine underway. It's truly exhausting to do anything, because people are starving, or subsisting on very little to eat."

Shivering in the bitter cold, surrounded by so many dilapidated tents and makeshift tarp shelters, el-Khawaja hoped for an end to Gaza's nightmare. "We dream of living like others do in the world," she said. "All of our rights, including our right to water, must be upheld. We deserve to live in safety, security and peace."

It is a sentiment echoed by Nasser Khamis Dahlan, who remains displaced from his Gaza City home in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. Like everyone in his midst, he had to subsist on very little, or nothing to eat or drink at all during the dark days of the past 15 months. He prioritized the needs of his young granddaughter, giving her any food or water he could get.

When news broke of the cease-fire last week, Dahlan was filled with relief, believing his prayers had finally been answered. Although he continues to grieve the loss of cherished family members killed under Israel's relentless bombardment, he is hopeful he can now start to rebuild his life, reunite with family and find basic necessities again, including water. "God willing, we'll return to our homes safely, even if they're destroyed," he said, channeling the views of fellow survivors throughout Gaza, now that the bombing has stopped. "The important thing is to return."

A Palestinian man carries two water containers past destroyed buildings in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 11, 2024. (Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP)

Source: Getty IMages

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