The Al Manasra family rarely get enough water for both drinking and washing after their daily trudge to a Gaza distribution point like the one where eight people were killed on Sunday in a strike that Israel’s military said had missed its target.
Living in a tent camp by the ruins of a smashed concrete building in Gaza City, the family says their children are already suffering from diarrhoea and skin maladies and from the lack of clean water, and they fear worse to come.
“There’s no water, our children have been infected with scabies, there are no hospitals to go to and no medications,” said Akram Manasra, 51.
He had set off yesterday for a local water tap with three of his daughters, each of them carrying two heavy plastic containers in Gaza’s blazing summer heat, but they only managed to fill two – barely enough for the family of 10. Gaza’s lack of clean water after 21 months of war and four months of Israeli blockade is already having “devastating impacts on public health” the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA said in a report this month.
For people queuing at a water distribution point on Sunday it was fatal. A missile that Israel said had targeted militants but malfunctioned hit a queue of people waiting to collect water at the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Israel’s blockade of fuel along with the difficulty in accessing wells and desalination plants in zones controlled by the Israeli military is severely constraining water, sanitation and hygiene services according to OCHA.
Fuel shortages have also hit waste and sewage services, risking more contamination of the tiny, crowded territory’s dwindling water supply, and diseases causing diarrhoea and jaundice are spreading among people crammed into shelters and weakened by hunger.
“If electricity was allowed to desalination plants the problem of a lethal lack of water, which is what’s becoming the situation now in Gaza, would be changed within 24 hours,” said James Elder, the spokesperson for the UN’s children’s agency UNICEF.
“What possible reason can there be for denying of a legitimate amount of water that a family needs?” he added.
COGAT, the Israeli military aid co-ordination agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last week, an Israeli military official said that Israel was allowing sufficient fuel into Gaza but that its distribution around the enclave was not under Israel’s purview.
For the Al Manasra family, like others in Gaza, the daily toil of finding water is exhausting and often fruitless.
Inside their tent the family tries to maintain hygiene by sweeping. But there is no water for proper cleaning and sometimes they are unable to wash dishes from their meagre meals for several days at a time.
Al Manasra sat in the tent and showed how one of his young daughters had angry red marks across her back from what he said a doctor had told them was a skin infection caused by the lack of clean water.
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