"We want water! We want water!"
Palestinians in the southern governorates of the Gaza Strip staged a protest demanding immediate intervention from international organisations to secure water, as a severe thirst crisis deepens across displacement camps. "We want water! We want water!" the crowd chants, before Dr. Kamal al-Sheikh Ali, director of the displacement camps in Rafah, addresses the camera to spell out the scale of the disaster. He explains that Rafah governorate alone hosts 181 camps sheltering roughly 200,000 displaced Palestinians, while the entire population receives only 2,500 cubic metres of water per day, split between 1,500 from the Red Cross and 1,000 from the Palestinian Water Authority. The wider picture across Gaza is bleaker still: the strip's water system, which once supplied around 100,000 cubic metres a day, has collapsed to just 35,000, with per capita availability dropping from 80 litres per person per day before the genocide to less than 10 litres now, and at times as low as 2 litres, far below the global humanitarian minimum of 50 to 100 litres.
Over 96% of Gaza's water is unfit for human consumption, more than 1,675 kilometres of the strip's 4,800-kilometre water and sanitation network have been destroyed by the Israeli occupation army, and 93% of households face water insecurity. Dr. al-Sheikh Ali calls on the International Red Cross, UNICEF, the Water Authority, and the United Nations to intervene immediately, warning that without a swift response, the displaced will face a catastrophe with dire consequences. The crisis is a direct result of the Israeli occupation's systematic destruction of Gaza's water infrastructure and its continued restrictions on the entry of fuel, equipment, and supplies needed to operate wells and desalination plants.
mhmadalshaer11 (IG)