Because We Have Website Visitors from around the World...

We wanted to make sure you saw this:

"Over 35,000 protestors converged in Washington DC this Memorial Day weekend for The National March for Palestine, the largest nationwide protest against U.S. foreign policy in decades. More than 100 buses arrived at the Lincoln Memorial from as far away as Minneapolis, Minnesota and Dallas, Texas. Organized in less than one week, the event unfurled the potential for Muslim American and Palestinian activists to lead antiwar mobilizations."

‘The Landscape is Shifting’: Over 35,000 rally for Palestine in DC on Memorial Day weekend

PALESTINE MARCH DC PHOTO: NUHA MAHAROOF / IG (SRI.LANKAN)

Your Bi-Weekly Water Fact

Fact #185 (6/1/21)

Israel’s most recent assault and bombardment has destroyed the Gaza Strip’s sewage systems, forcing municipalities to send untreated wastewater into the streets, over the open fields, and into the sea—further threatening the lives and health of citizens—infiltrating and polluting the coastal aquifer as well as Gaza’s seashore.

Israel’s bombing has incapacitated a critical desalination plant that helped provide fresh water to 250,000 people, and water pipes serving nearly a million people who now do not have access to clean piped water.

It would cost about $100m to rebuild the damage to industry, power, and agriculture. Gaza continutes to be subjected to Israel’s devastating 14-year blockade. Now, for more than three weeks, Israeli has shut down the Karm Abu Salem border crossing, the only gate though which Israel allows the entry of basic commodities into the Strip, including badly needed fuel and gas.

The lack of fuel needed for the only power plant in the Gaza Strip has shortened the average daily power supply to each household to no more than four hours.

Sources for the Fact:

http://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/124815
https://www.ochaopt.org/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/world/middleeast/gaza-humanitarian-disaster.html

"Here goes the only place we look forward to going in the summer."

“Due to the shortage of power supply and the intermittent power outages in the besieged Gaza Strip caused by the Israeli blockade, municipalities in the coastal enclave started today pumping sewage into the sea, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

For more than three weeks now, Israeli occupation authorities have shut down the Karm Abu Salem border crossing with Gaza, the only gate through which Israel allows the entry of basic commodities into the Strip, including badly needed fuel and gas.”

Due to Power Outage, Gaza Municipalities Forced to Drain Sewage into the Sea

Gaza's beach. (Photo: Fawzi Mahmoud, The Palestine Chronicle)

Israel's Assault on Gaza's Water Infrastructure

Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip is a humanitarian catastrophe. As well as erasing entire families, destroying hospitals and clinics and the roads accessing them, and the only lab for conducting tests at a time of surging Covid-19, Israel’s assault has badly damaged the water and sanitation infrastructure and the electricity system, leaving Gazans with only 2 – 3 hours of electricity a day.

The New York Times reported on May 18 that the streets of Gaza City were flowing with wastewater due to the destruction of the sewage system. Nearly a million people (about half the population) are without water due to the partial shutdown of a desalination plant and the smashing of water pipes, with the situation growing more dire with each passing day.

On May 20, the Middle East Monitor reported that the Israeli forces deliberately targeted two water pipelines in the Al-Saftawi area. cutting off water to 20% of Gaza City's residents. "The Municipality of Gaza regrettably confirms that the bombing of these two water pipelines, one of which serves more than 200,000 citizens, leaves them with no water supply and aggravating the water crisis that the city suffers due to the deliberate targeting of its infrastructure."