How do you explain to someone that an entire neighborhood can lose access to drinking water because of a few liters of motor oil?
Not because there is no water. Not because there is no desalination plant.
But because the machines and trucks that keep life running can no longer operate.
Twice a week, a water truck comes to our neighborhood. Families line up with containers and collect enough drinking water to last until the next delivery.
Yesterday was one of those days.
My father waited with the neighbors from early morning. The truck never arrived. Today, they waited again.
Still nothing.
By then, many families had already run out of safe drinking water. Later, some of the men went to find out what had happened.
The answer was painfully simple.
The truck assigned to our area had broken down. It needed motor oil.
Motor oil is still not being allowed into Gaza.
Three of the station’s five water trucks have now stopped operating. Just days ago, Gaza City’s main desalination plant also reported disruptions because the lubricants needed to keep its machinery running were unavailable.
What sounds like a technical problem quickly becomes something else.
It becomes thirst. It becomes parents wondering what their children will drink.
It becomes families forced to rely on water that is barely suitable for washing, let alone drinking. Today, my family managed to buy enough water.
Many others could not. This is how suffering works in Gaza.
It rarely arrives all at once. A blocked shipment. A broken truck.
A machine that stops working. And suddenly, an entire neighborhood is left without water.
That is why it is difficult to hear the word “ceasefire.” Because wars are not measured only by bombs.
They are measured by whether people can drink clean water, receive medical care, and live with dignity.
If essential supplies are still being blocked, if water systems are slowly collapsing, and if families are still struggling to secure the most basic necessities, then what exactly are we supposed to call this?
How many more people must suffer before the world understands that war does not always arrive as an explosion?
Sometimes it arrives as an empty water container waiting for a truck that never comes.
#WoundedGaza