According to Oxfam and other aid agencies, an estimated 400,000 Palestinians living in Gaza—one-fifth of its 2 million people—are now without access to a regular supply of clean water, after Israel’s 11 days of bombing of Gaza’s water pipes, sewerage systems, and the electricity lines which power water desalination plants along the coast. According to Oxfam International’s Shane Stevenson, although the bombing has stopped, Netanyahu’s government is still restricting deliveries of the fuel upon which Gaza’s electricity depends, further curtailing access to clean running water.
“Even before the recent hostilities, the average daily consumption of water [in Gaza] was just 88 liters per capita—far below the global optimal requirement of 100 liters,” Jake Johnson reported in Common Dreams, in his article yesterday on this horror.
The combination of untreated sewage flowing into Gaza’s densely populated neighborhoods after Israeli bombing with the fact that “hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza will soon have no access to basic hygiene” reported by Stevenson, creates the perfect conditions for an outbreak of diarrheal diseases.
