Gaza's water crisis deepens after Israeli strike destroys desalination plant

Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Zuhair al-Nasr walks through Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood carrying two water containers, looking for somewhere to fill them.

The 74-year-old is not sure where he will find drinking water for his family.

For the past week, he says, he has barely been able to fill the containers. The water he has managed to get comes from a groundwater well rather than the desalinated water he used to rely on.

Only weeks ago, Zuhair did not have to search like this.

A newly built desalination plant near the tents where he lives had brought clean drinking water to his area. Pipes had been connected, allowing residents to access water around the clock.

For about two months, Zuhair says, the plant made managing life during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza a little bit easier.

Zuhair lives with his large family – he has 13 children and more than 20 grandchildren – in a tent because his home in Beit Hanoon, north of Gaza City, was destroyed by Israel during the war.

Securing water for the family is a vital daily task, and the desalination plant meant that he no longer had to carry water over long distances.

But then, on August 24, Israel bombed the desalination plant, as it continues to flout the October ceasefire deal it agreed to.

The strike destroyed the plant and also damaged nearby displacement tents and residential structures.

Without the plant, Zuhair and Palestinians across Sheikh Radwan have been forced to go back to travelling long distances to get water.

“We were comfortable,” Zuhair says. “We’re suffering now. The water is the lifeline of our life. For drinking, cooking, washing and bathing.”

When water brought life back

Zuhair says his neighbourhood had become cleaner and more lively after the desalination plant arrived earlier this year. A steady and reliable source of clean water had encouraged people to return and resettle the area.

“Where there is water, there is life,” he says.

For families who had already lost their homes and been displaced by the war, the plant offered a rare sense of stability.

But the relief lasted only about two months.

When residents received an Israeli forced evacuation order, Zuhair says, he hoped the desalination plant would not be the target.

Zuhair remains bewildered by its destruction. He points out that the facility was a civilian water station serving families in an area already facing a severe drinking-water shortage.

He rejects Israeli allegations that the site was being used for purposes other than supplying water, saying claims that it was next to a weapons storage facility were false.

“Why destroy a place that was providing people with water?” Zuhair asks.

A plant built for a thirsty neighbourhood

Mohammed Mahmoud, 53, the owner of the now-destroyed desalination plant, says the facility had been operating for only two months before it was attacked.

According to Mahmoud, it was the only desalination plant serving much of Sheikh Radwan and had been providing free desalinated water to 17 shelters and collective centres.

Mahmoud now estimates his losses at no less than $500,000. The desalination machinery and equipment alone cost about $250,000.

The plant had been built using equipment and materials that were already difficult and expensive to obtain during the war.

The destruction came as Gaza’s wider drinking-water crisis was already deepening.

A survey cited by the United Nations found that 90 percent of Gaza’s population was experiencing frequent and unpredictable disruptions in access to safe, clean and reliable water for drinking, cooking and hygiene in early July.

In Gaza City, the figure was even higher, at 92 percent.

About 75 percent of Gaza’s population continued to rely on water provided by trucks as their primary source of drinking water at the end of July, with humanitarian partners delivering more than 20,000 cubic metres a day to thousands of collection points.

Yet even that system is struggling to meet demand.

UNICEF reported in August that up to 63 percent of people were unable to collect the minimum six litres (1.5 gallons) of water per person per day recommended for drinking and cooking.

For families in northern Gaza, the disappearance of another local source means greater dependence on a system that is already struggling to reach them.

When the trucks do not come

Nada Arouqi, a 36-year-old mother of four living in the Mukhabrat area in northwest Gaza City, says water trucks often only reach her neighbourhood two days a week.

Sometimes, she says, they do not come for an entire week.

Now, whenever a truck arrives, she has to make the most of it. “It has become an emergency situation,” she says.

She fills six containers and carries them from the collection point back to where her family lives.

There is no separate supply for bathing or cleaning, leaving the family dependent on the same water for drinking and other daily needs.

When the water does not come, she has to buy drinking water.

The shortage has also raised concerns about the cleanliness of the water that comes via the trucks.

Nada says one of her children developed a stomach illness and spent three or four days in hospital. She says doctors told her the illness was related to the water.

For a family already struggling to secure enough water, buying drinking water is another expense they can barely afford.

Her mother-in-law, 60-year-old Maryam Arouqi, who lives in the same displacement tent, describes another consequence of the shortage: the physical toll of bringing water home.

She says she has to refill a large household barrel three or four times a day because her family depends on it throughout the day.

There is no municipal water supply or household groundwater pump available to her, she says.

“I have to carry water,” Maryam says. “My body and bones are collapsing because of this.”

She describes tendon injuries, problems with her hands, chest pain and high blood pressure, and says she has been advised to stop the strenuous work.

But stopping is not an option when water is needed for an entire household. She and her grandchildren keep walking with empty containers, looking for somewhere to fill them.

“Our struggle for water never ends. Who can live without water? Water is life,” she says.