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JERUSALEM: Atop air strikes, displacement and hunger, an unprecedented water crisis is unfolding across Gaza, heaping further misery on the Palestinian territory’s residents.
Gaza was already suffering a water crisis before nearly 22 months of war between Israel and Hamas damaged more than 80 percent of the territory’s water infrastructure.
“Sometimes, I feel like my body is drying from the inside, thirst is stealing all my energy and that of my children,” Um Nidal Abu Nahl, a mother of four living in Gaza City, told AFP.
Water trucks sometimes reach residents and NGOs install taps in camps for a lucky few, but it is far from sufficient.
Israel connected some water mains in north Gaza to the Israeli water company Mekorot, after cutting off supplies early in the war, but residents told AFP water still wasn’t flowing.
Local authorities said this was due to war damage to Gaza’s water distribution network, with many mains pipes destroyed.
Gaza City spokesman Assem Al-Nabih told AFP that the municipality’s part of the network supplied by Mekorot had not functioned in nearly two weeks.
Wells that supplied some needs before the war have also been damaged, with some contaminated by sewage which goes untreated because of the conflict.
Many wells in Gaza are simply not accessible, because they are inside active combat zones, too close to Israeli military installations or in areas subject to evacuation orders.
At any rate, wells usually run on electric pumps and energy has been scarce since Israel turned off Gaza’s power as part of its war effort.
Generators could power the pumps, but hospitals are prioritized for the limited fuel deliveries.
Lastly, Gaza’s desalination plants are down, save for a single site reopened last week after Israel restored its electricity supply.

Nabih, from the Gaza City municipality, told AFP the infrastructure situation was bleak.
More than 75 percent of wells are out of service, 85 percent of public works equipment destroyed, 100,000 meters of water mains damaged and 200,000 meters of sewers unusable.
Pumping stations are down and 250,000 tons of rubbish is clogging the streets.
“Sewage floods the areas where people live due to the destruction of infrastructure,” says Mohammed Abu Sukhayla from the northern city of Jabalia.
In order to find water, hundreds of thousands of people are still trying to extract groundwater directly from wells.
But coastal Gaza’s aquifer is naturally brackish and far exceeds salinity standards for potable water.
In 2021, the UN children’s agency UNICEF warned that nearly 100 percent of Gaza’s groundwater was unfit for consumption.
With clean water nearly impossible to find, some Gazans falsely believe brackish water to be free of bacteria.
Aid workers in Gaza have had to warn repeatedly that even if residents can get used to the taste, their kidneys will inevitably suffer.

Though Gaza’s water crisis has received less media attention than the ongoing hunger one, its effects are just as deadly.
“Just like food, water should never be used for political ends,” UNICEF spokeswoman Rosalia Bollen said.
She told AFP that, while it’s very difficult to quantify the water shortage, “there is a severe lack of drinking water.”
“It’s extremely hot, diseases are spreading and water is truly the issue we’re not talking about enough,” she added.
Opportunities to get clean water are as dangerous as they are rare.
On July 13, as a crowd had gathered around a water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp, at least eight people were killed by an Israeli strike, according to Gaza’s civil defense agency.
A United Arab Emirates-led project authorized by Israel is expected to bring a 6.7-kilometer pipeline from an Egyptian desalination plant to the coastal area of Al-Mawasi, in Gaza’s south.
The project is controversial within the humanitarian community, because some see it as a way of justifying the concentration of displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza.

On July 24, a committee representing Gaza’s prominent families issued a cry for help, calling for “the immediate provision of water and humanitarian aid, the rapid repair of infrastructure, and a guarantee for the entry of fuel.”
Gaza aid workers that AFP spoke to stressed that there was no survival without drinking water, and no disease prevention without sanitation.
“The lack of access, the general deterioration of the situation in an already fragile environment — at the very least, the challenges are multiplying,” a diplomatic source working on these issues told AFP.
Mahmoud Deeb, 35, acknowledged that the water he finds in Gaza City is often undrinkable, but his family has no alternative.
“We know it’s polluted, but what can we do? I used to go to water distribution points carrying heavy jugs on my back, but even those places were bombed,” he added.
At home, everyone is thirsty — a sensation he associated with “fear and helplessness.”
“You become unable to think or cope with anything.”

BEIRUT: Hundreds of Lebanese gathered solemnly near Beirut’s coast on Monday to commemorate a half-decade since the cataclysmic port blast of 2020, when more than 200 people were killed in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. Carrying Lebanese flags and portraits of some of the victims, many of those standing said they felt deeply disappointed that no one has been held to account for the devastating explosion.
“Can someone tell me why five years on we’re still standing here? If everyone stands with this cause, then who’s against us?” said William Noun, whose brother Joseph, a firefighter, was killed by the blast.
“This file needs to close. It’s been five years and we don’t want to have a sixth,” Noun said from a stage set up near the port.
The blast destroyed large swathes of Beirut, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless.
The names of all those killed were read out as protesters stood facing the wreckage of the Beirut grain silos, which were heavily damaged in the blast and continued to deteriorate and collapse for years after. At 6:07 p.m. — the time of the blast five years ago — the few hundred gathered stood for a moment of silence.
“I’m here because I find it crazy that five years later, we still don’t know exactly what happened,” said Catherine Otayek, 30. “I had hope for answers in 2020. I didn’t think we’d still be here.”
Although she did not lose anyone herself, the Lebanese expatriate living in France said she made it a point to return to Beirut every year for the commemoration as a duty to fellow Lebanese.
The port blast came nearly a year into Lebanon’s catastrophic economic collapse, and was followed by a political crisis that paralyzed government and a devastating war between Hezbollah and Israel starting in 2023.
Investigation stymied
The blast is thought to have been set off by a fire at a warehouse on the evening of August 4, 2020, detonating hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate. Lebanese officials promised at the time that an investigation into the blast’s root causes would be completed in five days. But years of political interference stymied the probe, with judicial officials and then-ministers continually raising legal challenges against the investigating judges, effectively paralysing the investigation. Some Lebanese have drawn hope from pledges by President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam — both of whom came to power at the beginning of this year — to prioritize justice for blast victims.
On Monday, Aoun pledged to hold those responsible for the blast accountable, regardless of their position or political affiliation. “Justice will not die, and accountability will inevitably come,” he said.
The president and prime minister did not attend Monday’s commemoration. Judge Tarek Bitar resumed his investigation earlier this year and has questioned several officials in recent months — but he has yet to issue a preliminary indictment, which many Lebanese were hoping for ahead of the fifth anniversary.
“We want a preliminary indictment that is complete and comprehensive,” said Paul Naggear, whose three-year-old daughter Alexandra was killed in the blast. “We want to know who was supposed to evacuate our neighborhoods, so that we could get to the hospital, and so my daughter could have survived.”
Naggear and his wife Tracy have been among the most vocal advocates for accountability for the blast.
Rights groups have pressed for a full investigation that will establish the full chain of responsibility. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” said Reina Wehbi, Amnesty International’s Lebanon campaigner. “The families of those killed and injured in the Beirut explosion have waited an intolerable five years. They must not be forced to endure another year of impunity.”