DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza(National times)- After waking early to stand in line for an hour under the August heat, Rana Odeh returns to her tent with her jug of murky water. She wipes the sweat from her brow and strategizes how much to portion out to her two small children. From its color alone, she knows full well it\u2019s likely contaminated. Thirst supersedes the fear of illness. She fills small bottles for her son and daughter and pours a sip into a teacup for herself. What\u2019s left she adds to a jerrycan for later. \u201cWe are forced to give it to our children because we have no alternative,\u201d Odeh, who was driven from her home in Khan Younis, said of the water. \u201cIt causes diseases for us and our children.\u201d Such scenes have become the grim routine in Muwasi, a sprawling displacement camp in central Gaza where hundreds of thousands endure scorching summer heat. Sweat-soaked and dust-covered, parents and children chase down water trucks that come every two or three days, filling bottles, canisters and buckets and then hauling them home, sometimes on donkey-drawn carts. Each drop is rationed for drinking, cooking, cleaning or washing. Some reuse what they can and save a couple of cloudy inches in their jerrycans for whatever tomorrow brings \u2014 or doesn\u2019t. Over the 22 months since Israel launched its offensive, Gaza\u2019s water access has been progressively strained. Limits on fuel imports and electricity have hampered the operation of desalination plants while infrastructure bottlenecks and pipeline damage choked delivery to a dribble. Gaza\u2019s aquifers became polluted by sewage and the wreckage of bombed buildings. Wells are mostly inaccessible or destroyed, aid groups and the local utility say. Meanwhile, the water crisis has helped fuel the rampant spread of disease, on top of Gaza\u2019s rising starvation. UNRWA \u2014 the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees \u2014 said Thursday that its health centers now see an average 10,300 patients a week with infectious diseases, mostly diarrhea from contaminated water. Efforts to ease the water shortage are in motion, but for many the prospect is still overshadowed by the risk of what may unfold before new supply comes. And the thirst is only growing as a heat wave bears down, with humidity and temperatures in Gaza soaring on Friday to 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Searing heat and sullied water
Mahmoud al-Dibs, a father displaced from Gaza City to Muwasi, dumped water over his head from a flimsy plastic bag \u2014 one of the vessels used to carry water in the camps. \u201cOutside the tents it is hot and inside the tents it is hot, so we are forced to drink this water wherever we go,\u201d he said. Al-Dibs was among many who told The Associated Press they knowingly drink non-potable water. The few people still possessing rooftop tanks can\u2019t muster enough water to clean them, so what flows from their taps is yellow and unsafe, said Bushra Khalidi, an official with Oxfam, an aid group working in Gaza. Before the war, the coastal enclave\u2019s more than 2 million residents got their water from a patchwork of sources. Some was piped in by Mekorot, Israel\u2019s national water utility. Some came from desalination plants. Some was pulled from high-saline wells, and some imported in bottles. Palestinians are relying more heavily on groundwater, which today makes up more than half of Gaza\u2019s supply. The well water has historically been brackish, but still serviceable for cleaning, bathing, or farming, according to Palestinian water officials and aid groups. Now people have to drink it. The effects of drinking unclean water don\u2019t always appear right away, said Mark Zeitoun, director general of the Geneva Water Hub, a policy institute. \u201cUntreated sewage mixes with drinking water, and you drink that or wash your food with it, then you\u2019re drinking microbes and can get dysentery,\u201d Zeitoun said. \u201cIf you\u2019re forced to drink salty, brackish water, it just does your kidneys in, and then you\u2019re on dialysis for decades.\u201d Deliveries average less than three liters (12.5 cups) per person per day \u2014 a fraction of the 15-liter (3.3-gallon) minimum humanitarian groups say is needed for drinking, cooking and basic hygiene. In February, acute watery diarrhea accounted for less than 20% of reported illnesses in Gaza. By July, it had surged to 44%, raising the risk of severe dehydration, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children\u2019s agency. Early in the war, residents said deliveries from Israel\u2019s water company Mekorot were curtailed \u2014 a claim that Israel has denied. Airstrikes destroyed some of the transmission pipelines as well as one of Gaza\u2019s three desalination plants. Bombardment and advancing troops damaged or cut off wells \u2013 to the point that today only 137 of Gaza\u2019s 392 wells are accessible, according to UNICEF. Water quality from some wells has deteriorated, fouled by sewage, the rubble of shattered buildings and the residue of spent munitions. Fuel shortages have strained the system, slowing pumps at wells and the trucks that carry water. The remaining two desalination plants have operated far below capacity or ground to a halt at times, aid groups and officials say. In recent weeks, Israel has taken some steps to reverse the damage. It delivers water via two of Mekorot\u2019s three pipelines into Gaza and reconnected one of the desalination plants to Israel\u2019s electricity grid, Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel told The Associated Press. Still, the plants put out far less than before the war, Monther Shoblaq, head of Gaza\u2019s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, told AP. That has forced him to make impossible choices.The utility prioritizes getting water to hospitals and to people. But that means sometimes withholding water needed for sewage treatment, which can trigger neighborhood backups and heighten health risks. Water hasn\u2019t sparked the same global outrage as limits on food entering Gaza. But Shoblaq warned of a direct line between the crisis and potential loss of life. \u201cIt\u2019s obvious that you can survive for some days without food, but not without water,\u201d he said. Water access is steadying after Israel\u2019s steps. Aid workers have grown hopeful that the situation won\u2019t get worse and could improve. Southern Gaza could get more relief from a United Arab Emirates-funded desalination plant just across the border in Egypt. COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, said it has allowed equipment into the enclave to build a pipeline from the plant and deliveries could start in a few weeks. The plant wouldn\u2019t depend on Israel for power, but since Israel holds the crossings, it will control the entry of water into Gaza for the foreseeable future But aid groups warn that access to water and other aid could be disrupted again by Israel\u2019s plans to launch a new offensive on some of the last areas outside its military control. Those areas include Gaza City and Muwasi, where much of Gaza\u2019s population is now located. In Muwasi\u2019s tent camps, people line up for the sporadic arrivals of water trucks. Hosni Shaheen, whose family was also displaced from Khan Younis, already sees the water he drinks as a last resort. \u201cIt causes stomach cramps for adults and children, without exception,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t feel safe when your children drink it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza(National times)- After waking early to stand in line for an hour under the August heat, Rana Odeh returns to her tent with her jug of murky water. She wipes the sweat from her brow and strategizes how much to portion out to her two small children. From its color alone, she knows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n