Without water, in the sewer and under bombs: Gaza has no prospects – 10/14/2023 – Vinicius Torres Freire

Almost 90% of Gaza’s water comes from wells. About 3% comes from desalination plants; almost 7% is imported from the Israeli water company. At least this is the latest data available from the Palestine Water Service, from 2021.

On Thursday (5) last week, the only electrical plant in Gaza stopped working, due to a lack of industrial diesel, because Israel cut off exports of the product.

Without electricity, there is no way to turn on well pumps or desalinate water. Without power, sewage pumps and dirty water treatment pumps also stop working, says a former college classmate, a Norwegian who works to help Palestinians in a humanitarian organization in his country. Sewage gushes into streets clogged with rubble from hundreds of buildings destroyed by bombs.

About 45% of Gaza’s electricity needs were met by the single thermoelectric plant and imports from Israel. A minimal remainder of light comes from hospital generators, some public services and humanitarian organizations. About half of the energy needed is missing: this year, there was electricity for just 12 hours a day, on average.

Only 4% of Gaza’s inhabitants have access to water free from contamination by Escherichia coli, a bacteria that causes intestinal and urinary diseases. The figure is from the Palestinian Central Statistical Service and the Palestinian Water Service.

In less abnormal times in 2021, there were 82.7 liters of water per day per person in Gaza, for domestic use _the minimum need, according to UN agencies, would be 50 to 110 liters, depending on the region. In Brazil, consumption was 171 liters per person, per day, in the Southeast, according to the National Sanitation Information System; in the Northeast, 120 liters. The numbers are from 2020.

Since last Sunday, food, medicine and other basic necessities of life have not entered Gaza either. Israel besieges and bombs the land. Egypt generally cooperates with the blockade and detests Hamas. However, on Saturday morning there were rumors that the country would negotiate a deal with Israel and the US. In exchange for receiving foreigners trying to flee Gaza, Egypt wants a free pass to bring some help to the Palestinians trapped in the “hell hole”, to use the words of the UN agency dedicated to helping the Palestinians.

Egypt does not want to receive refugees because it does not have the means to take care of them, for fear of importing people from Hamas and because, as so many Arab and even Palestinian countries say, the exodus would end up handing over territory to Israel, as in 1948.

This scenario gives food for thought not only about the horror of now, but about what will happen after the Israeli invasion, if there is one tomorrow.

Suppose Israel annihilates Hamas, a sentence that doesn’t even have a clear meaning. What will take the place of the Islamic dictatorship of the horror militia? Not that Hamas manages much, if anything, but there will have to be an interregnum and then a government — someone in charge, with some control.

Who is going to occupy Gaza to hand over the government to someone, perhaps the Palestinian National Authority? Who would prevent a civil guerrilla war from this new government with possible heirs from Hamas or similar?

Supposing there is anything that can be called a government, what weapons will it have? Will there be an international troop, a “peace force”, to maintain order? People from the Israeli government tell the Western media that they will not occupy Gaza or provide any aid.

Who will manage and finance the minimal reconstruction, if there is anything left to rebuild? Where will electricity and fuel and therefore water come from? From Israel, which limits the water even from the Palestinian National Authority, in the West Bank, which it occupies more and more, in fact?

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