Food insecurity and water deprivation are fuel for Gaza’s ongoing genocide
“Why should a child filling up water die?” Because Israel said that bombing a water station in western Gaza City on Sept. 1, killing four people including two children, was necessary to “remove threats.” And because the international community is doing nothing to stop the daily slaughter.
Destroying Gaza’s remaining clean water supply appears to be part of Israel’s far right playbook for an impending “mass removal” of the population, possibly to African countries. According to OCHA, on August 24 “severe damage to a UNICEF-supported water well and desalination facility in Deir Al Balah has disrupted access to safe drinking water for more than 4,000 people, including around 2,000 children. Emergency water trucking is ongoing.” In an August 28th post, UNICEF reported that four children had been killed in strikes which also destroyed its warehouse containing nutrition supplies for children, pregnant women and nursing mothers.
On Sept. 1, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that over 6,700 water samples taken during January – August 2026 indicated a tripling of water contamination in Gaza over those months, causing a doubling of cases of acute watery diarrhea which is frequently lethal for children. With Israel blocking the entry of sufficient supplies of baby formula and many mothers unable to breastfeed because of malnutrition and dehydration, infants are especially at risk.
And famine could return to Gaza. A report published on August 13 by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the world’s leading famine-monitoring body, indicated that although the Oct. 2025 ‘ceasefire’ enabled more humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip, “conditions remain highly fragile” with at least 1.4 million people (nearly 70 percent of the population) expected to face “high levels of food insecurity” before the end of the year. The report states that the amount of food reaching people “has declined since Feb. 2026, falling from a peak of 2.13 million people reached in Nov. 2025 to 1.49 million people in May 2026” and could fall further given funding constraints and uncertainty concerning the ability of 37 international NGOs to operate after being barred by Israel. “Meanwhile, the area accessible to Gaza’s population has shrunk by more than 50 percent since October 2023, forcing people to shelter in overcrowded sites marked by extremely precarious conditions and heightened risk of infectious disease. Combined with limited access to health, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services, these conditions make recent improvements in food security and nutrition highly vulnerable to reversal.”
As the approaching rainy season threatens to spread sewage into tents, and with water for drinking, hygiene and cooking restricted to only about 3 liters per person per day in most of the Gaza Strip – far below the WHO’s required minimum of 15 liters – the outlook is increasingly bleak for public health and human survival.
Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine