The Electronic Intifada – by Ali Abunimah
Israel has blocked the international development organization Oxfam from bringing vital equipment into the Gaza Strip to help make drinking water safe.
“The blockade on Gaza prevented Oxfam’s public health programme bringing in a chlorometer to help get right chlorine levels to clean water,” Ben Phillips, the organization’s Campaigns and Policy Director tweeted from Gaza today.
More than 90 percent of Gaza’s water supply is unfit for human consumption due to years of Israel’s deliberate destruction of sewage and water infrastructure, its ban on imports of equipment and pollution and over-extraction of the only underground aquifer.
As a consequence waterborne illnesses are widespread.
Phillips said that Oxfam “made an application [to Israel] to import” the equipment, but “[A]fter 8 months without agreement we had to use less effective processes instead.”
These apparently did not work. The equipment was to be shipped via Israel from a German manufacturer, Phillips added.
on Twitter
An Oxfam supported water filtering system. Because in Gaza, 95% of the water is not safe to drink. pic.twitter.com/MXrTIdOMw2
— Ben Phillips (@benphillips76) September 8, 2013
No water to wash your face
In addition to the poor quality of water, only a quarter of households receive running water every day, during several hours only.
The permanent electricity crisis means that water can frequently not be pumped and many Palestinian households must buy expensive bottled water.
“There is no water at all. I don’t even find a drop to wash my face,” Gaza student and writerMalaka Mohammed tweeted yesterday. “As a result [I] had to buy it!”
on Twitter
https://twitter.com/MalakaMohammed/status/376425183365451777
Life conditions for Gaza’s almost 1.7 million residents have deteriorated sharply since the 3 July military coup in Egypt.
Since the coup, the Egyptian military regime has destroyed dozens of underground tunnels that have provided the only alternative route into Gaza for many basic supplies banned or severely restricted by the Israeli siege.
I never want to hear the word “Holocaust” coming out of a Jews mouth again. This is the true holocaust that is happening to the Palestinians. This is the highest crime against humanity, and those responsible should be hanged, drawn and quartered, burned and ashes thrown to the winds, never to be heard of again.
Agreed
Amen
The Jews have learned cruelty from their former Nazi masters but they have yet to learn a hard lesson which the Nazis learned, and that is diseases which thrive in squalor do not confine themselves to the squalid…and not allowing clean water in this enlightened age is to use bio-weapons.
If I was a Palestinian infected by Jewish cruelty over water rations I would infect the underside corner of my ID Pass where an IDF soldier must grasp it to read it. Even if they wear gloves they must handle the gloves with bare fingers, and many of them would take my condition back home to Israel.
I see no politician getting hysterical yearning to bomb Israel in order to protect the people of Gaza.
Where are the hastily arranged meetings of govts to discuss this crisis?
Zioturds forcing them to drink piss water??? What’s next? Catapulting Plague infested dead bodies over the border? How Medieval. No wonder they were labeled “scourge of mankind” during the Crusades.