To provide his family with the water they need for drinking, bathing and washing clothes, Ahmed al-Shambari embarks on a long quest north to the Gaza Strip.
Shanbari said most of the wells near their temporary shelter in the Jabalia refugee camp had been destroyed.
And the water distribution network is barely functioning after more than nine months of war, which has devastated Gaza’s infrastructure.
Water was already scarce before the conflict began in October and much of it was undrinkable. Humanitarian agencies say the population of 2.4 million depends on an increasingly polluted and depleted aquifer.
It takes Shanbari four hours in the scorching heat to collect the remaining stinking supplies.
With his three children, he sets out, buckets in hand, through piles of rubble and trash in search of a working tap or an aid agency hose attached to a water truck.
“We are suffering a lot to get water,” he told AFP.
Shanbari said the situation had worsened since heavy fighting between the Israeli military and Hamas began in Jabalia in May.
“After the last attack, not a single well is left,” he said.
‘tired’
The UN humanitarian aid office OCHA said much of Gaza’s groundwater was already contaminated by sewage before the war. More than 97 percent was undrinkable.
Today, many aid groups describe the situation in Gaza as “catastrophic”.
For weeks, Palestinians living in Gaza have told AFP journalists of their intense thirst, which drives them to frenzy, dreaming of a cup of tea and the humiliation of being unable to bathe.
Water is so precious to the Shanbari family that they try not to waste even a single drop once they find it.
They carefully pour water from the jerrycans they take home into basins for cleaning utensils and pitchers for bathing.
Parents say they are tired of constantly struggling to obtain the minimum necessities, and their children are sick.
“All my children have fallen sick, they are suffering from kidney failure, jaundice, itching, coughing,” said Shanbari. “I don’t know what to say, and there are no medicines available in the north.”
Just a short distance from Shanbari’s home, the roads are dotted with huge sewage pits, sometimes as big as ponds.
Useless
Shanbari said even if they were to find a well with water, there is no fuel in the north to run the pumps needed to extract the water.
Wastewater treatment plants are also reportedly shutting down due to fuel shortages and fighting.
An expert on water infrastructure in the Gaza Strip described the region’s water distribution system as effectively nonfunctional.
He said it could only be restarted through a ceasefire, as spare parts and experts were needed to access the stations and wells.
The Israeli military said on Sunday that access was possible to water storage centres in the al-Mawasi humanitarian area, where it has ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to move.
But people are scared to go there after Israeli attacks on al-Mawasi on July 13 killed at least 92 people and wounded 300, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Israel, United Nations agencies and the Palestinian Authority have raised the possibility of resupplying electricity from Israel to a desalination plant and a water treatment plant in Gaza.
But the local power distribution company said the line was still too damaged to distribute power.
The Gaza war began with a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, resulting in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on Israeli data.
The militants also took 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, 44 of whom the Israeli military says are dead.
At least 39,006 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory military operation in Gaza, according to Gaza Health Ministry figures.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
