DAILY TRIFECTA: Witness The Destruction Of A Society

Israel is "undoing the natural order of things, rupturing the basic unit of Gazan life."

TITLE: Two Million Gazans Are Now Confined to 15 Square Miles
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/two-million-gazans-are-now-confined-to-15-square-miles-cd396ffc

EXCERPTS: Palestinians in Gaza have long lived in one of the most crowded places on the planet. Since the war broke out there over 10 months ago, the designated space in which they can hope to exist safely has dramatically diminished.

Israel has in recent weeks widened its offensive against Hamas in Gaza to areas its military previously marked as safe zones, but where it now says militants are hiding, hemming Palestinians into smaller and smaller portions of the strip. 

So far this month, the Israeli military has issued at least nine evacuation orders covering areas it has designated as humanitarian zones, directives that the United Nations estimates have affected 213,000 people. It means Gaza’s 2.2 million people are now mainly confined to an area of roughly 15 square miles—smaller than the footprint of Manhattan. 

Put another way, at the start of the year, evacuation orders pushed Palestinians fleeing the war to shelter in areas totaling around 33% of the strip, according to the U.N.; they are now reduced to just 11% of Gaza, an enclave roughly the size of Philadelphia. 

The shrinking space for Palestinians to seek refuge is causing heightening fears over the outbreak of disease and worsening living conditions in the small pockets available to shelter. “This means there is going to be more disease, more pressure on whatever facilities exist,” said Bushra Khalidi, a policy lead at Oxfam, a charity working in the Gaza Strip.

A new concern about the concentration of people is poliovirus. The Israeli military earlier this year said it had found remnants of poliovirus in sewage in Gaza, and the enclave’s health ministry last week said it had found traces of the virus, which can lead to paralysis, in a 10-month-old child. 

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has said that hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza are at risk of contracting polio, and the Israeli military this week held a meeting with aid agencies about how to vaccinate against the virus, which has been largely eradicated in most of the world.

Untreated sewage, shortages of clean water, insufficient food, compromised medical facilities and a lack of personal hygiene supplies are exacerbating fears over an outbreak. The recent Israeli evacuation orders have affected makeshift clinics, schools and water-and-sanitation facilities, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordination office said Monday. 

TITLE: Children are drinking from puddles and wading through sewage pools, as Israel pummels water systems in Gaza
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/23/middleeast/israel-gaza-water-shortages-heatwave-crisis-intl/index.html

EXCERPTS: The amount of water available in Gaza works out at 4.74 liters of water (1 gallon) per person per day, Oxfam reported in July, adding that this is “just under a third of the recommended minimum in emergencies and less than a single toilet flush.” The international nonprofit has accused Israel of using water as a “weapon of war,” saying Palestinians in Gaza have “almost no water to drink, let alone to bathe, cook, or clean.”

Extreme summer heat in Gaza is making a desperate shortage of water even worse for Palestinians already stalked by famine and struggling with repeated displacement.

This June was the hottest on record in Israel, according to the Israel Meteorological Service. Temperatures in Negba, a few miles north of Gaza, reached 39.4 C (103F) in the middle of the month, according to CNN meteorologists.

Israel’s war in Gaza has reduced supplies of fuel, chlorine and spare parts, stifling water production, purification and sewage pumping, according to the UN. Around 70% of all water and sanitation facilities in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged, the WASH Cluster, a United Nations-led group that coordinates humanitarian efforts for water, sanitation and hygiene, said on July 24, citing satellite analysis from the UN Satellite Centre.

Wim Zwijnenburg, who investigates the environmental impact of conflicts for the Dutch peace organization PAX, told CNN the level of damage done to Gaza’s water systems is “the most severe we’ve seen so far in any conflict in the last 10 years, probably even longer.”

“What we’re seeing so far… is the near-complete destruction of all water infrastructure, which includes water pumping stations, water wells, the whole piping system in Gaza,” Zwijnenburg said. “The few functioning pumps that are still operating, the quality of the water is so bad… (But) people have no choice but to drink it.”

People in sprawling tent camps say they can barely access potable water or sanitation facilities in areas polluted by raw sewage and teeming with bugs. Women endure several menstrual cycles without washing, according to the UN. Others queue in the heat to use toilets at overwhelmed hospitals – or risk being chased by dogs to use washrooms in the middle of the night. The UN previously recorded one improvised shelter with only 25 toilets for 14,000 people inside and 59,000 outside.

Palestinians told CNN they must prioritize scarce water supplies for consumption instead of bathing, washing clothes or cleaning dishes. Parents told CNN they struggle to find enough gas or fuel to boil and sterilize water, increasing the risk of illness. Some give their children food that requires minimal water for preparation – but offers poor nutritional value. Others describe water contaminated during transportation in unclean tanks.

Mohammed Hamouda, a health worker displaced in Deir al-Balah, told CNN he and his family, including his three young children, have suffered from diarrhea and abdominal cramps due to consumption of dirty water.

“We get the water supposedly clean and drinkable,” he said. “But gastrointestinal diseases and intestinal diseases occur… We do not know that it is unclean until after we use it,” he said.

TITLE: Global Water Conflicts Surged in 2023, Fueled by Israeli Attacks
https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-water-gaza

EXCERPT: Attacks by Israeli settlers and the Israel Defense Forces on water supplies in the West Bank and Gaza accounted for a quarter of all water-related conflicts last year, reported the Pacific Institute, as the IDF began a full-scale assault and blockade on Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October.

Rights groups have warned for nearly 11 months that Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid and attacks on civil infrastructure were leaving Gaza's 2.3 million people without adequate safe drinking water, causing diseases to spread and intensifying the starvation crisis in the enclave.

The Pacific Institute's annual Water Conflict Chronology quantified those attacks, finding that Israeli settlers and armed forces had contaminated and destroyed water wells and irrigation systems on 90 occasions in 2023.

Cases of water-related violence in Palestine last year included the destruction of 800 meters of water pipelines in the town of Al Awja in the West Bank, cutting off the water supply to agricultural lands; airstrikes on solar panels that provided energy to the Gaza Central Wastewater Treatment Plant, which served 1 million people across 11 communities; and the bombing of at least one desalination plant owned by the Eta Water Company in Gaza.

As in previous years, much of the water-related violence in the West Bank was driven by Israel's illegal annexation of land for settlements, which the International Court of Justice last month ruled violates international law.

With the IDF and Israeli settlers attacking water supplies in Palestine, particularly in the last three months of 2023, water conflicts in the Middle East accounted for 38% of all water-related violence across the globe last year.

SEE ALSO:

TITLE: A baby evacuated from Gaza lost an eye and most of his family in the war
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-injured-children-war-hamas-israel-93f4b92c2117b2761126d0a3e62ab797

EXCERPTS: After the late October strike that killed his 4-year-old brother, Ayes, and badly wounded his then 22-year-old mother, Halimah, Mostafa was found meters away from the destroyed home in Jabaliya in northern Gaza — and still inside his crib, according to his grandmother.

What followed was a familiar story of separation amid the chaos of the war, which has displaced close to 2 million Palestinians from their homes.

While Mostafa was receiving treatment for his injured eye and forehead at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, his mother was having a leg amputated at a different hospital in northern Gaza, where she was also being treated for severe injuries to her neck, chest, and eyes.

While still recovering from her injuries, Mostafa’s mother moved to a large family home in Jabaliya, where a Nov. 22 strike killed her, her 6-year-old son, Bassam, and 50 other family members.

TITLE: The War in Gaza Is Making Thousands of Orphans
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/22/world/middleeast/gaza-orphans.html

EXCERPT: The war in Gaza is taking children from parents and parents from children, undoing the natural order of things, rupturing the basic unit of Gazan life. It is making so many orphans in such chaos that no agency or aid group can count them.

Medical staff say children are left to roam hospital hallways and fend for themselves after being rushed there bloodied and alone — “wounded child, no surviving family,” some hospitals label them. Neonatal units house babies whom no one has come to claim.

In Khan Younis, a volunteer-run camp has sprung up to shelter more than 1,000 children who have lost one or both parents, including the Akeilas. One section is dedicated to “only survivors,” children who have lost their entire families, except perhaps a sibling. There is a long waiting list.

Amid the bombing, the constant pell-mell evacuations from tent to tent and apartment to hospital to shelter, no one can say how many children have lost track of their parents, and how many have lost them for good.