The weakening of hunger migrates many gazans over a destroyed landscape every day to draw all their drinks and wash water – a painful load that is still well below the levels needed to keep people healthy.
Even as global attention has turned to hunger in Gaza, where after 22 months with a devastating Israeli military campaign A global hunger monitor says a famine scenario is unfolding, the water crisis is equally serious according to aid groups.
Although some water comes from small desalination units driven by auxiliary agencies, most are drawn from wells in a brak aquifer that has been further contaminated by wastewater and chemicals seeping through the rubble, scattered diarrhea and hepatitis.
Cogat, the Israeli military agency responsible for coordinating help in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories, says it drives two water pipes into the Gaza Strip, providing millions of liters of water a day.
Palestinian water officials say these have not worked recently.
Israel stopped all water and electricity supply to Gaza early in the war, but resumed some supply later, although the pipeline network on the territory has been severely damaged.
Most water and sanitation infrastructures have been destroyed, and pumps from the aquifer are often dependent on electricity from small generators – for which fuel is rarely available.
Cogat said the Israeli military has enabled coordination with aid organizations to bring in equipment to maintain water infrastructure throughout the conflict.
Moaz Mukhaimar, 23 years old and a college student before the war, said he has to go about a mile, queuing for two hours to pick up water. He often goes three times a day and pulls it back to the family tent over uneven soil on a small metal hand wager.
“How long are we going to be like that?” he asked, pulling two larger cans of a lot of brackish water for use for cleaning and two smaller of cleaner water to drink.
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 Central Gaza Strip.
“The kids continue and go, and it’s hot. They will continue to drink. Who knows if tomorrow we will be able to fill up again,” she said.
Their struggle for water is replicated across the small, crowded territory, where almost everyone lives in temporary shelters or tents without wastewater or hygiene facilities and not enough water to drink, boil and wash as diseases spread.
The United Nations says that the minimal emergency level of water consumption per year. Person is 15 liters a day to drink, cooking, cleaning and washing. The average daily consumption in Israel is about 247 liters a day according to Israeli Rights Group B’Tselem.
Bushra Khalidi, humanitarian policy for the aid agency Oxfam in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories said that the average consumption in Gaza was now 3-5 liters a day.
Oxfam said last week that preventable and treatment waterborne diseases “ripped through Gaza”, with reported rates that increased by almost 150% over the past three months.
Israel accuses Hamas of the suffering in Gaza and says it provides sufficient help to the 2.3 million inhabitants of the territory.
Cows to water
“Water button certainly increases a lot every day, and people basically ration between either that they want to use water to drink, or they will use a lot for hygiene,” said Danish Malik, a global water and sanitary staff for the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Just standing in line for water and carrying it now emerges for hours every day for many Gazans who often involve beating others to a place in line. Sometimes it is sometimes broken out, says the Gazans.
Collection of water is often children’s jobs when their parents seek food or other necessities.
“The children have lost their childhood and become carriers of plastic containers running behind water vehicles or going far into remote areas to fill them for their families,” said Munther Salem, water resources head at Gazastra Water and Environment Quality Authority.
With water so hard to get, many people who live near beach wash in the sea are.
A new water pipeline funded by the United Arab Emirates is scheduled to serve 600,000 people in southern Gaza from a desalination plant in Egypt. But it can take several weeks to be connected.
Much more is needed, says auxiliary agencies. UNICEF spokesman James Elder said the long-term beetle was deadly. “Hunger and dehydration are no longer the side effects of this conflict. They are very front -line effects.”
Oxfams Khalidi said there was a need for a ceasefire and unbound access for aid agencies to resolve the crisis.
“Otherwise, we will see people who die from the most preventable diseases of Gaza – which are already happening to our eyes.”
