Failing Sanitation Infrastructure in Gaza →

Report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on the shortage of water infrastructure in Gaza:

the longstanding shortage of adequate sanitation infrastructure in the Gaza Strip has resulted in the discharge of around 90 million litres of untreated or partially treated sewage into the sea every day, posing serious health and environmental hazards. Development of water and sanitation infrastructure has been severely impacted by the import restrictions imposed by Israel in its nine-year blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Gaza: shortage of sanitation infrastructure raises health and environmental concerns [via OCHA]

Polluted beach in Gaza city, June 2016. Photo by OCHA

Polluted beach in Gaza city, June 2016. Photo by OCHA

News Roundup: June 2016

An important piece from Israeli journalist Amira Hass on Israel’s water wars:

Water is the only issue in which Israel (still) finds it difficult to defend its discriminatory, oppressive and destructive policy with pretexts of security and God.

Israel Incapable of Telling the Truth About Water It Steals from Palestinians [via Haaretz]

Israel intends to destroy a water-holding tank that serves 20 families of Palestinian shepherds and their flocks in the northern Jordan Valley.

Israel Plans to Destroy the Only Water Source for Shepherds in West Bank Village [via Haaretz]

Even when clinics receive new surgical instruments, these are swiftly destroyed by factors far outside the control of Gazan surgeons. This is because the water supply in Gaza is so contaminated that many clinics rely on sea water to clean surgical instruments—and ‘this just corrodes it all,’ the surgeon said.

Unexpected Details Ram Home the Scale of Gaza Crisis [via SciDev]

This UNICEF article [PDF] addresses inequitable access to water in the West Bank, as well as Gaza’s water supply, which is unfit for human consumption due to sewage, agricultural infiltration, and salt-water intrusion from the sea.

About one million West Bank Palestinians consume 60 litres of water per capita per day or less, significantly below the WHO recommendation of 10.

December 2013: Protecting children from unsafe water and inadequate sanitation [via UNICEF State of Palestine News]