Humanitarian crisis escalates as sewage contaminates Gaza water: Mel Frykberg reports from Gaza.

ISRAEL'S CONTINUING BLOCKADE of the Gaza Strip is putting the health of a million-and-a-half Palestinians at risk and threatening the lives of the more vulnerable such as children and the elderly, as the quality of drinking water continues to decline due to sewage seeping into the underground aqueduct.

"Gazans are reaching the end of their tether and using up their last reserves of resistance both emotionally and physically in dealing with the ongoing stress, unemployment, malnutrition and poverty they face under the Israeli and international blockade imposed on the coastal territory," Jerusalem-based Michael Bailey, Oxfam's advocacy and media manager, told The Middle East (TME).

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has released a report warning of an impending health disaster in Gaza as a result of the inadequate supply of safe drinking water, exacerbated by the recent drought, and the continued pumping of untreated sewage into the ocean which is then flowing back into the Gaza aqueduct and polluting water supplies.

WHO took seawater samples from 13 risky areas in the five governorates of the Gaza Strip. Two microbiological tests were carried out to examine the presence of human faeces (Faecal coliform) and animal faeces (Faecal streptococcus).

The results revealed that three areas in Gaza and one area in Rafah governorates (containing 30.8% of the population) are polluted with both, while three areas in Gaza City (representing 23.1% of the population) are polluted only with Faecal coliform.

Following WHO's water analysis results, the Palestinian Water Authority last month told Gazans to boil all water before cooking or drinking, following a dire shortage of hypochlorite, the chemical used to clean water, as a result of the blockade.

Just over a year ago Israel declared Gaza a "hostile territory", following Hamas' takeover of the Strip, and cut its electricity and fuel supplies drastically. Consequently Gaza's water and sanitation systems are near to complete collapse as power is needed to run treatment plants, pump water to homes and pump sewage away from populated areas.

Gaza's 135 drinking water wells, three treatment plants and four storm-water pumping stations which all run on petrol and electricity are almost at a standstill. According to Gaza's Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), the body responsible for clean water and sanitation in Gaza, only 37 of the 122 water supply pumps have any fuel at all.

This translates into 30% of Gazans having access to running water for four to eight hours once every week, 40% once every four days and 30% once every two days.

CMWU says that unless the water and sewage pumps are fixed it will be unable to stem the growing contamination of groundwater. The closure of many of Gaza's sewage processing plants means that 77 tonnes of untreated sewage will continue to be pumped into the sea every day, eventually seeping into the water table.

The blockade imposed on Gaza last June by Israel is also preventing delivery of the materials desperately needed to fix the crumbling water plants and sewage treatment facilities.

"Since last June there has been an increasingly tight definition of what the Israeli forces consider basic human needs," said Martha Myers, country director for Care International in the West Bank and Gaza. "The list of non-accepted goods now seems to include pipes and maintenance materials needed to maintain a basic water and sanitation system in Gaza."

A report in January by a human rights agency, the Centre on Housing Rights and Eviction, said the wastewater treatment facilities in Beit Lahiya, Gaza City and Khan Yunis posed a high risk danger of flooding due to their state of disrepair and disruptions to energy supplies for operating the systems' pumps. It warned that heavy rains could cause the wastewater reservoir in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip to overflow, sending 1.5m cubic metres of sewage into surrounding districts, which would "unleash a humanitarian and environmental disaster of epic proportions".

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Last year five Gazans, including two toddlers and an elderly woman, were killed and 25 people injured when a sewage treatment pool collapsed and flooded the village of Umm Al Naser in northern Gaza, submerging at least 25 houses.

Medical experts have also commented on the sharp rise in hypertension linked to high salinity levels as well as kidney stones and kidney failure which could also be caused by excessive fluoride levels in the Gaza wells. Dehydration is also a problem especially with many people unable to afford to buy drinking water.

TME spent five days in a refugee camp in Gaza recently where the quality of the water was unfit to drink with the result that households were forced to purchase drinking water at inflated prices due to sky-rocketing transportation costs

Bailey told TME that a year ago Oxfam donated $40,000 towards fuel purchases to keep Gaza's water system running for eight days as an emergency stop-gap, never imagining that the situation would still be dragging on, or bave deteriorated to this extent.

"Today that same amount of money would provide enough fuel to keep the water system running for 10-weeks, an indication of how downgraded the system is and how only a small percentage of it can now be utilised," explained Bailey.

There appears to be little chance of the crisis being reversed, especially since three planned and internationally financed wastewater treatment plants have been put on hold due to the blockade.

"The World Bank is behind the financing of one treatment plant in Beit Lahiya, the German Development Bank is backing one in the middle of the Gaza Strip and the Japanese government is bankrolling one in Khan Yunis in the south," said Bailey.

"But despite the funds being available, they have all been forced to suspend operations as no contractors will take the work knowing they are unable to import the necessary building materials since the Israelis will not allow them entry into the Occupied Territory," added Bailey.

It now appears only pressure brought to bear on the Israeli government from a determined American administration will resolve this issue.

The Israeli human rights organisation Bat Shalom commented succinctly, "Gaza is under siege. Hundreds of commodities needed for maintaining daily life are not allowed into the strip, by order of the government of Israel. Even the entry of water filters--vital for purifying the water drawn from Gazan wells, which are heavily polluted by brine, oil and sewage--has already been officially prevented."

Does it help the children of Sderot (in Israel) when we force the children of Gaza to drink polluted water? It seems the government of Israel thinks it might.