Israel Continues to Destroy Water Sources: Civilians Targeted While Digging Well in North Gaza

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns in the strongest terms the killing of a group of Palestinian volunteers and activists by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on Sunday, 18 May 2025, in al-Saftawi area in northern Gaza Strip, while they were digging a water well to serve the residents amid the inability of Gaza’s municipalities and local bodies to supply them with water. Footages capturing the incident revealed the IOF’s horrific crime, as they directly and unjustifiably targeted civilians in blatant disregard for the principle of distinction, which ensures protection of civilians and their property. This crime reflects the IOF’s deliberate destruction of water sources, with the aim of turning Gaza into an unlivable zone and forcibly displacing northern Gaza Strip’s residents.

According to our staff’s monitoring, at approximately 18:15 on Sunday, Israeli warplanes fired at least one missile at a group of activists, who were digging a water well near al-Waleed Petrol Station in a-Saftawi area, north of the Gaza Strip. As a result, seven people were killed, and they were identified as: ‘Awni Mohammed ‘Awni Abu al-Nour (18), Ibrahim Mohammed Isma’il Khela (27), Isma’il Mohammed Isma’il Khela (29), Anas Ramadan ‘Abed al-Razeq Shanan (29), Fawzi Nafiz Mohammed al-Dadad (36), Hasan Mohammed Abu Warda (30), and Tareq Ziyad Mohammed Tanboura (24). Additionally, 5 others sustained various injuries. It is worth noting that the targeted activists were digging the well due to water scarcity in the area and the inability of Gaza’s municipality to pump water into residents’ houses.

This crime was not a separate incident but came as part of a vicious campaign to kill civilians without deterrence and destroy Gaza’s roads, water and health infrastructure over the past 19 months. The Israeli war machine has destroyed more than 330,000 linear meters of water networks and 655,000 linear meters of sewage networks, in addition to approximately 2,850,000 linear meters of roads and streets. Furthermore, 719 water wells have been targeted,1 and complete or partial damage was inflicted on 89% of the water and sanitation sector’s assets. This has resulted in water insecurity for more than 91% of the Gaza population, with 65% of them receiving less than six liters per person per day,2 constituting a deliberate violation of the right to life and human dignity.

According to UN reports, the destruction of Gaza’s water facilities has reached catastrophic and unprecedented levels, as 71% of municipal seawater desalination plants have been destroyed (100% in northern Gaza and Gaza City), along with 69% of water production wells (up to 88% in some areas), and 66% of water tanks. Additionally, the main seawater desalination plant in northern Gaza, which produced 10,000 cubic meters per day,3 was destroyed. Oxfam reported that due to this destruction and fuel shortages, water production has decreased by 84%, worsening the population’s suffering and deepening the crisis of access to safe drinking and domestic water amid the near collapse of the infrastructure.4

PCHR affirms that in this compound crime, the IOF killed innocent civilians struggling to secure their right to water, amid an IOF’s deliberate strategy that violates all international laws and conventions by depriving the Gaza Strip’s population of water and food sources. This materialized through systematic starvation and dehydration, using them as weapons of war aimed at subjugation and displacement of residents, thereby imposing harsh living conditions that align with the elements of genocide, as outlined in Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The intent of this strategy is to deliberately inflict conditions of life on Gaza Strip residents calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part. The seriousness of these actions lies not only in their transformation of water resources into tools of oppression but also in reflecting a form of ecocide,5 which severely undermines Palestinians’ rights to life, food, land, and dignity, as stipulated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

In light of the above, PCHR stresses the urgent need for the international community to condemn these crimes and immediately halt them. PCHR also calls on the member states of the Security Council to awaken their collective conscience and work on issuing a binding and immediate resolution to stop the war, ensure the protection of civilians in the Gaza Strip, and enhance their access to water and essential food supplies by activating Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter against Israel. PCHR also calls on the High Contracting Parties to the four Geneva Conventions to pressure and obligate Israel to open safe humanitarian corridors for the delivery of water, fuel, and aid relief, and to allocate urgent resources to repair the damaged water and sewage networks, ensuring the restoration of the bare necessities of life for Gaza’s population.

  1. Gaza’s Government Media Office, Press Release No. (817), an update of the most important statistics of the genocide war on Gaza. ↩︎

  2. Report: Humanitarian response by the UN and humanitarian partners during phase one of the ceasefire. link: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/report-humanitarian-response-by-the-un-and-humanitarian-partners-during-phase-one-of-the-ceasefire/ ↩︎

  3. “Gaza Strip: WASH Infrastructure Damage Assessment”, Analysis of data presented in WASH Cluster Meeting note (12 June 2024) based on finding of UNOSAT (3 June 2024). ↩︎

  4. Oxfam, Report: How Israel has weaponized water in its military campaign in Gaza, June 2024, link: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621609/bp-water-war-crimes-180724-en.pdf;jsessionid=70739990D729E028EB247E737686F0FD?sequence=1 ↩︎

  5. [1] Laurent Lambert, “Ecocide as Genocide: A Human Security Approach to ‘Utter Annihilation’ in Gaza”, October 06, 2024  Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies:
    chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.dohainstitute.org/en/Lists/ACRPS-PDFDocumentLibrary/ecocide-as-genocide-a-human-security-approach-to-utter-annihilation-in-gaza.pdf     ↩︎

In a Village in the West Bank: A Poem

In a Village in the West Bank

Naomi Shihab Nye

One little boy writing a book,
“making pictures for it too,” he said over Zoom,
proud face bright as an apple in my screen.
“It’s about a problem,” he smiled shyly
in that occupied land where soldiers sneak around at night
breaking into houses, chopping olive trees, smashing lamps.
“A problem between spiders and ants.” Well, this sounded
refreshing, a problem not made by humans. He said
spiders and ants each want to dominate their corners,
not letting other species have space. I didn’t quite understand,
since spiders spin high-up webs and ants tunnel in the ground,
but he insisted on friction, something about vicinity.
They want the whole space. I could see stone walls behind him.
Hear his parents speaking Arabic in the background,
a spoon clinking a bowl. I felt homesick for my whole life.
Now he was whispering, other kids listening in,
scattered in villages around the West Bank where my grandma
once lived. I knew exactly what their world looked and
smelled like, and wished to be with them
on that ground, stirring smoky coals in a taboon.
“But there’s something the ants can do,” he went on softly.
“So they don’t all get killed. The spiders are stronger
than the ants, you know. So the ants pretend to be spiders!”
What? How does an ant pretend to be a spider?
He showed reluctance to tell, being still immersed
in the making of his story, but gave a clue.
“It’s an expression on the face. An ant makes his face look like a
spider’s face. For safety. Then they won’t attack.
It’s not that hard.”

Copyright © 2025 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 21, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

Aid teams highlight growing anxiety in Gaza after food is looted

23 May 2025 Peace and Security

Long-awaited food supplies have been looted in Gaza overnight while being transported to desperate communities in the war-torn enclave, UN aid teams reported on Friday.

 

“Fifteen World Food Programme trucks were looted late last night in southern Gaza, while en route to WFP-supported bakeries,” the UN agency said. “These trucks were transporting critical food supplies for hungry populations waiting anxiously for assistance.”

The development is a blow to continuing efforts to help Gaza’s most vulnerable people after Israel allowed a limited number of aid trucks into Gaza earlier this week, following an 11-week total blockade.

Today, Gazans face “hunger, desperation and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming”, WFP said, noting that the uncertainty “is contributing to rising insecurity”.

“We need support from the Israeli authorities to get far greater volumes of food assistance into Gaza faster, more consistently and transported along safer routes, as was done during the ceasefire,” it insisted.

Critical first step

The incident comes a day after about 90 trucks loaded with food, nutrition supplies, medicines and other critical stocks finally started to move from Kerem Shalom crossing point in southern Gaza deeper into the enclave.

Footage released by WFP showed workers carrying sacks of flour into an empty warehouse and making dough ready for baking. In subsequent online posts, the UN agency said that a handful of bakeries were once again baking bread after receiving “limited supplies” overnight.

But the UN agency insisted: “Bread alone is not enough for people to survive.”

“This is a critical first step - but assistance must be scaled up,” said WFP Deputy Country Director Vladmir Jovcev. “More essential food is needed to push back the risk of famine.”

More aid needed

In an appeal for far more aid, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA said that what had been allowed in was “nowhere near sufficient” to meet the needs of Gaza’s 2.1 million people.

“Other supplies as basic as fresh food, hygiene items, water purification agents, and fuel to power hospitals have not been let in for over 80 days,” OCHA noted.

More than 500 pallets loaded with nutrition supplies – nearly 20 truckloads – reached UNICEF’s warehouse in Deir al Balah on Thursday, according to OCHA.

These supplies included ready-to-use therapeutic food and lipid-based nutritional supplements which were then repackaged into smaller loads for delivery to people via dozens of distribution points.

On Thursday, humanitarian teams moved another batch of about 100 truckloads of aid to the Kerem Shalom border crossing and picked up about 35 inside Gaza.

The deliveries included more flour, nutrition items, and medical supplies.

OCHA said supplies that are collected usually reached Kerem Shalom a day or two earlier because of the long procedures at the crossing.

As truckload sizes do not exactly match, teams inside Gaza stack an extra layer of pallets on each truck to make the most of the space.

West Bank settler violence

OCHA also updated on the situation in the West Bank where continued high levels of settler violence are having an alarming impact on the Palestinian population.

On Thursday, an entire Bedouin community in Maghayer ad Deir, located near Ramallah, began dismantling their homes to move somewhere safer after Israeli settlers set up an outpost less than 50 metres away on Sunday.

Altogether, more than 20 households are affected – roughly 60 adults and as many children.

OCHA said attacks have escalated as settlers have stormed the community, threatened residents, broken into animal shelters and set fires.

Also on Thursday, nearly 150 masked settlers torched Palestinian vehicles in the town of Brugin, located in the Salfit area.  Eight people were injured, with most sustaining burns while trying to put out the fires.

The incident comes in the wake of the killing last week of a pregnant Israeli woman nearby, touching off a week-long Israeli operation that locked down about 11,000 Palestinians.  Settler attacks also escalated during this time.

 (from UN News: Global perspective Human Stories

© WFP Trucks carrying bags of flour arrive at Al-Banna Bakeries in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, at dawn on Friday.