Since the beginning of the Israeli genocide and the imposition of a total blockade on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, water desalination plants have almost completely shut down due to severe fuel shortages.
According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, more than 90 percent of water and desalination facilities have gone out of service. As infrastructure systems collapse, thousands of displaced families are left with no option but to rely on contaminated, salty, and undrinkable water sources.
In the camps and tents, life is no longer measured by hours of sleep, but by the number of liters of water that arrive — or fail to arrive.
Six Children Contend With Water Unfit for Human Use
Rahma Fadi, a mother of six living in a tent near Al-Maghazi refugee camp, told me: “When my children cry from thirst, I give them salty water and pray for God’s mercy. What else can I do?”
In an interview earlier this winter, Fadi was able to tell me about her family’s ordeal. Since the beginning of the genocide, she has been unable to access clean water. With desalination plants out of service for many months, her daily routine — and that of her children — has become a long wait for a rare water truck that may or may not arrive. Even when the truck does arrive, the water is often unsafe to drink, stored in plastic jerrycans surrounded by flies. But she has no other choice.
As I spoke with her, Fadi sat with her six children in a worn-out tent on the outskirts of Al-Maghazi refugee camp after being displaced from their home in northern Gaza, specifically the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood. She built the tent from pieces of fabric and plastic stretched tightly over flimsy wooden poles. Inside, the air is heavy with the smell of damp earth mixed with dust and drifting smoke.
The pale faces of Fadi and her children reflect the weight of harsh, unrelenting days: 10-year-old Salma, 8-year-old Mohammed, 5-year-old Ghada, 3-year-old twins Omar and Yaqeen, and baby Zeinab, who has not yet completed her first year. All of them wear tattered clothes that offer little protection from the heat of the day or the cold of night.
Rahma Fadi’s husband, 41-year-old Akram Fadi, used to work as a taxi driver. He sustained an injury to his right leg from an Israeli tank shell while fleeing toward the southern part of Gaza and, due to the severe shortage of medical equipment and treatment capacities, doctors were forced to amputate his leg. As a result, the burden of sustaining the family has fallen almost entirely on Rahma, who had never worked before the war. Today, she stands in his place in long water lines, waiting for hours just to fill a few containers that must last the entire day.