Palestinian Hussein Al-Masrai moves between the equipment of the "water desalination plant", where he works in the northern Gaza Strip, after it stopped working during the past hours due to the lack of fuel necessary to operate it.

Al-Masrai and other workers inside this station, which is considered one of the few stations operating in the northern Gaza Strip governorate, wonder about the conditions of residents and displaced people without water, in the absence of fuel.

Day after day, the water crisis in the northern Gaza Strip increases in severity, with the continuation of the devastating Israeli war since last October 7, which destroyed the infrastructure in the Strip, water and sewage networks, and a number of operating desalination plants, in addition to the repercussions of the tightening siege and the prevention of the entry of fuel and supplies. The basic life of the area.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip suffer from extreme difficulty in providing safe drinking water, as they travel long distances in order to obtain a few liters of it. Residents of the North ration their use of drinking water for fear of it being cut off and not receiving new quantities.

Last March, a joint statement issued by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and the Palestinian Water Authority said that the total water available at that time in the Gaza Strip was estimated at about 10-20 percent of the total water available before the aggression, as this quantity is subject to the availability of fuel.

He added that the war had “catastrophic effects on the water infrastructure, water networks and supply sources in general, as 40 percent of them were destroyed, and the main pumps were broken down due to bombing or due to the depletion of fuel,” according to the statement.

The per capita share of water in the Gaza Strip declined by 96.5 percent during the war, as the citizen in the Gaza Strip can barely access between 3-15 liters of water per day in light of the ongoing war, according to the statement.

High fuel prices

Al-Masrai says: “Since the beginning of the war, we have been operating the station with great difficulty due to the lack of capabilities and repeated Israeli targeting.”

He explains that the most prominent obstacles that prevented its operation or reduced its operation were “the lack of availability of fuel and resorting to buying quantities of it from the black market at high prices that reached 15 times its normal price.”

The availability of fuel, even on the black market, remains rare, according to Al-Masraei, who added that it is usually “mixed with oils that cause damage to appliances, but we are forced to use it due to the lack of an alternative.”

The station where Al-Masrai works provides citizens in the northern Gaza area with drinking water, through 35 vehicles that operate on diesel fuel, according to him.

He pointed out that the current high temperatures increase citizens’ consumption of water, as this is what their bodies require to survive, warning of the danger of its shortage during hot climates.

Al-Masrai appealed to “the concerned authorities to intervene urgently and introduce the necessary diesel to operate desalination plants to provide safe drinking water to the population.”

Extreme thirst

In Gaza Governorate, the situation does not seem different, as Gaza Municipality spokesman Hosni Muhanna warns of “a state of severe thirst facing the Palestinians there.”

He told Anatolia: “The Palestinians in the governorate are suffering from extreme thirst, as the amount of water available is estimated at a quarter of the quantity before the aggression in the best of circumstances, and it covers only 40 percent of the city’s area.”

He continued: "This thirst resulted from an acute water shortage as a result of the policy of destroying wells and water lines since the beginning of the devastating Israeli war."

He explained that the city is facing a real crisis in the availability of water, especially fresh and potable water.

He stated that the ongoing Israeli aggression for the tenth month in a row caused “widespread and significant destruction of the infrastructure of water networks, including the complete destruction of about 42 wells, and 16 wells partially, in addition to the destruction of about 70,000 linear meters of water networks.”

He explained that the Israeli army is still deliberately “targeting water networks and wells to create thirst among the population.”

In its latest military operation in the Al-Shuja'iya neighborhood (east), which it began at the end of last June, and in the southwest of the city, which it began on Monday, the army caused varying amounts of damage to 4 water wells, according to Muhanna.

At the beginning of last June, UNRWA warned of the repercussions of stopping the operation of water desalination plants in the Gaza Strip.

The UN agency said in a tweet on the X platform at the time: “Due to the lack of fuel in Gaza, important water desalination plants have stopped working.”

She continued: "People do not have enough water. Survival has become a major challenge."

She explained that the cessation of these stations forces "families, including children, to walk long to get water."

The suffering of citizens

Palestinian Hamdi Abu Saada, from Jabalia refugee camp located in the northern Gaza Strip, complains of the scarcity of potable water in the area. He says: “We suffer a lot from a lack of water, and what reaches us in our neighborhoods and streets destroyed by the Israeli aggression is not sufficient.”

Abu Saada adds that every three days they are able to fill gallons of drinking water once, and the amount he gets is not enough for his family in light of the high temperatures.

Abu Saada calls on the world to "stand by the people of Gaza and provide them with life necessities, especially the diesel needed to operate water desalination plants."

Long Distances

Citizen Kamel Kreizm from the Al-Karama neighborhood, northwest of Gaza City, has his children every day forced to walk long distances to provide drinking water.

He says, from inside a “desalination plant” about 700 meters away from his place of residence, which he reached on foot, in order to obtain small quantities of water: “Desalinated water arrives in our devastated area once a week, and with this extreme heat, the quantity we get is not enough.” "We are forced to search in other places far from home."

Krizem warns that the lack of fuel needed to operate the water desalination plants will increase their daily suffering and “will cast a new catastrophic shadow on the people in the northern Gaza Strip.”

As for the young man Hamza Abu Saada from Jabalia Camp, he says that he stands for 3 to 4 hours “under the blazing sun” until he can fill gallons of drinking water for his family.

He explains that he is unable to mobilize every day due to the crowding of people on water trucks and the density of the camp’s population.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza with American support, leaving about 127,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of dozens of children.

Tel Aviv continues the war, ignoring the UN Security Council resolutions to stop it immediately, and the orders of the International Court of Justice to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and improve the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.