Al-Mezan: 95% of Gaza’s two million population don’t have access to clean water

On World Water Day, 95 percent of Gaza’s two million population still do not have access to clean water, as 97 percent of water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption based on the standards of the World Health Organization, said Al-Mezan Center in a recent report.

The human rights center said that since the start of the occupation in 1967, ‘Israel’ and its parastatal institutions have purposely prevented Palestinians from controlling their water sources throughout the whole occupied Palestinian Territories, thereby flagrantly violating their inalienable right to self-determination, including permanent sovereignty over natural resources.

The extent of control exercised by Israeli occupation authorities over the water sector, the center said, has impeded Palestinian access to their water sources, such as the Jordan River, to maintain and develop existing water facilities or to build any new infrastructure without having been granted an Israeli-issued permit.

This system of racialized and institutionalized material discrimination implemented by ‘Israel’ and its parastatals in the water sector has led many rights groups to describe it as “water apartheid”, possibly amounting to a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the center added.

The Gaza Strip has been affected for years by a severe and purely human-made water crisis that continues unabated.

In parallel to the Israeli occupation and apartheid system, the crisis is further compounded by Israel’s 13-year illegal closure and systematic military attacks on civilian populations and infrastructure in Gaza.

The closure, which is considered an unlawful collective punishment of two million Palestinians under international law, and full-scale military bombardments have pushed all basic services in the Gaza Strip to the brink of collapse, including water and sanitation facilities.

Several years ago, the UN Country Team in the oPt warned that by 2020 “with the supply of water too low to meet the demand, the living and health conditions of the people of Gaza can only further deteriorate, exposing the population to water-borne illnesses, and other threats.”

In the same report, it was said that the Gaza Strip in 2020 would no longer be “a livable place” unless action was taken.

And yet, in 2021, 95 percent of Gaza’s two million population still do not have access to clean water, as 97 percent of water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption based on the standards of the World Health Organization.

The human rights center said that for many Palestinians in Gaza, safe and clean water means expensive and unaffordable water.

Indeed, as a result of the poor financial situation and high levels of poverty in Gaza, most of its population cannot afford to buy drinkable water and must rely solely on tap water (when available).

For just as many, the lack of water means being unable to implement even basic safety and preventive measures for COVID-19, such as hand-hygiene.

For the Palestinian agricultural community in the “buffer zone”, the no-go military area unilaterally enforced by Israel within the territory of the Gaza Strip, water means work, cultivation, growth, but also devastation.

On World Water Day, Al Mezan has recalled the words of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the oPt, who rightly noted that “the collapse of natural sources of drinking water in Gaza […] has become a potent symbol of the systematic violation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

Al Mezan said it seized this occasion to call on third States and the international community to uphold their moral and legal obligations towards the occupied Palestinian people.