• The charity admonishes Israelis for intentionally targeting and decimating the Palestinian’s water supply
• Oxfam also calls out Netanyahu’s visit to the US as “wildly inappropriate” while allowing Palestinian genocide to continue
Oxfam has again repeated its accusation of the Israeli government systematically targeting the Palestinian water system while calling outNetanyahu’s visit to the US.
According to a study undertaken by the charity, the Israeli government has been intensifying attacks on the Palestinian’s water and sewage system. The attacks recorded to have taken place since October 8th till now have identified the following.
▪ Intentional water deprivation by cutting off Mekorot supply
▪ Destruction of critical water production infrastructure and impact on supply
▪ Destruction of water utility warehouses and blocking repairs
▪ Destruction of water laboratories
▪ Destruction of sanitation infrastructure and services
▪ Destruction of Oxfam and partners’ water infrastructure
▪ Destruction of infrastructure inside healthcare facilities
The devastation from the concentrated attacks was so severe that the drinking water supply had been disrupted severely and reduced by 94%from figures obtained through Oxfam’s own analysis, which they conducted till May 2024.
Devastation of Water Supply
As a direct result of Israeli attacks since October 8th, the availability and access to water for a person’s daily needs decreased from the pre-7 October 2023 quantity of 82.7 litres to less than 5 litres per day as of May 2024 for their consumption and household use.
That means that people in Gaza are now surviving with only 6% of the water they had before 7 October, which even at that time was already falling short of the World Health Organisation’s 100 litres per person per day standards.
Seven months before the Oxfam report in November 2023, the organisation Visualizing Palestine produced visuals of data and research to communicate Palestinian suffering. They identified that the people of Gaza had lost access to water, which accounted for 97% of their daily water needs.
Humanitarian Efforts Obstructed
There have been persistent efforts to re-install processes to increase potable water production, but the Israelis have also been equally rabid and obstructive in targeting and destroying those infrastructures. Oxfam states one such account drawn from many examples illustrating Israeli behaviour, which still goes unpunished.
“In December 2023, a seawater desalination plant constructed by the UAE in the Sinai desert was used to increase water supply to Gaza, and provided 1,200m3/day of potable water to Gaza. This had increased to 3,700m3/day by 16 May 2024, following the construction of a pipeline from the Rafah crossing to a reservoir, crossing the Philadelphia Corridor.”
“On 7 June 2024, the UAE desalination plant supply was discontinued due to severe damage to the newly constructed supply line following the Israeli military ground invasion of Rafah.”
Israelis Target Children Yet Again
It is Oxfam’s research that not only describes the untold scale of things at ground level but also the fact that Israelis have been using the strategy to attack the water supplies leading to children being targeted indirectly.
As of late May 2024, reported cases of water and sanitation-relateddiseases had reached 727,909 persons. Of these, 485,300 cases are of acute watery diarrhoea, where concerningly 112,880 are children under the age of five, with 9,700 cases of acute bloody diarrhoea (suspected dysentery) and 81,000 cases of acute jaundice syndrome (suspected hepatitis A).
UN Women reports that 337,057 boys and girls under five are at particular risk of water and sanitation-related diseases, and 107,000 elderly men and women face an elevated risk of contracting hepatitis A.
In what already has become an extensive list, the evidence compiled by Oxfam and their partners suggests in no uncertain terms that this vile act must be considered a water war crime being committed by the Israelis.
At a bare minimum, it is cowardice on their part to target children who have already lost so much, all while Netanyahu sits protected by his complicit partners in the West awaiting to address the world with his twisted propaganda.
