Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #122. Feb 20

Between the afternoons of 19 and 20 February, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, 103 Palestinians were killed, and 142 Palestinians were injured. Between 7 October 2023 and noon on 20 February 2024, at least 29,195 Palestinians were killed in Gaza and 69,170 Palestinians were injured, according to MoH in Gaza.

The Global Nutrition Cluster is reporting a steep rise in malnutrition among children and pregnant and breastfeeding women in the Gaza Strip, as food and safe water become increasingly scarce and disease proliferates. The situation is especially serious in northern Gaza where 1 in 6 children under the age of 2 (15.6 per cent) who were screened at shelters and health centres in January were found to be acutely malnourished. Of these, almost 3 per cent suffered from severe wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition. This rate of 15.6 per cent of wasting among children under the age of two indicates a decline in a population’s nutritional status that is unprecedented globally in three months, according to the report.

read the entire report: Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #122

A steep rise in malnutrition is being reported among children and pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza, as food and safe water become increasingly scarce and disease proliferates. A boy from a displaced family with a fortified biscuit provided as humanitarian assistance in southern Gaza. Photo by WFP/Ali Jadallahhun

In Gaza, water is life

Fresh water was scarce even before the war. Now the situation is dire.

“There is a saying in the region: ‘Water is life.’ There is a belief, based on a passage in the Qur’an, that God created all living things out of water, so water is the essence of life.

The Bible has something to say about water in times of war: “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink” (Prov. 25:21). These words are recognized as authoritative by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike.

Water plays an important cultural role in Palestinian society. Aside from the obvious biological need for it, it is also an object of memory and longing. Although it is getting harder under Israel’s coastal blockade, generations of Gazan fishermen have made their life on the water, even earning a reputation in times gone by for the fine fishing nets they produced and shipped around the world. (It is thought that the word gauzemight be derived from Gaza.)

For the Palestinians expelled to the West Bank in 1948 from homes on the Mediterranean coast, the sea is a longed-for memory that cannot be touched from the Palestinian side of the separation barrier. Likewise, to the east, the Jordan River is beyond an ever-expanding bank of Israeli settlements, farms, and reserve lands. Then there are the springs and wells in the hills. They allow for life in dry climates. Water is life.

In Gaza, water is life

Article by Ben Norquist, a fellow at Churches for Middle East Peace