Heat and thirst drive families in Gaza to drink water that makes them
sick
[August 16, 2025]
By WAFAA SHURAFA and SAM METZ
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — After waking early to stand in line for
an hour under the August heat, Rana Odeh returns to her tent with her
jug of murky water. She wipes the sweat from her brow and strategizes
how much to portion out to her two small children. From its color alone,
she knows full well it’s likely contaminated.
Thirst supersedes the fear of illness.
She fills small bottles for her son and daughter and pours a sip into a
teacup for herself. What's left she adds to a jerrycan for later.
“We are forced to give it to our children because we have no
alternative,” Odeh, who was driven from her home in Khan Younis, said of
the water. “It causes diseases for us and our children.”
Such scenes have become the grim routine in Muwasi, a sprawling
displacement camp in central Gaza where hundreds of thousands endure
scorching summer heat. Sweat-soaked and dust-covered, parents and
children chase down water trucks that come every two or three days,
filling bottles, canisters and buckets and then hauling them home,
sometimes on donkey-drawn carts.
Each drop is rationed for drinking, cooking, cleaning or washing. Some
reuse what they can and save a couple of cloudy inches in their
jerrycans for whatever tomorrow brings — or doesn’t.
When water fails to arrive, Odeh said, she and her son fill bottles from
the sea.
Over the 22 months since Israel launched its offensive, Gaza's water
access has been progressively strained. Limits on fuel imports and
electricity have hampered the operation of desalination plants while
infrastructure bottlenecks and pipeline damage choked delivery to a
dribble. Gaza’s aquifers became polluted by sewage and the wreckage of
bombed buildings. Wells are mostly inaccessible or destroyed, aid groups
and the local utility say.
Meanwhile, the water crisis has helped fuel the rampant spread of
disease, on top of Gaza's rising starvation. UNRWA — the U.N. agency for
Palestinian refugees — said Thursday that its health centers now see an
average 10,300 patients a week with infectious diseases, mostly diarrhea
from contaminated water.
Efforts to ease the water shortage are in motion, but for many the
prospect is still overshadowed by the risk of what may unfold before new
supply comes.
And the thirst is only growing as a heat wave bears down, with humidity
and temperatures in Gaza soaring on Friday to 35 degrees Celsius (95
degrees Fahrenheit).
Searing heat and sullied water
Mahmoud al-Dibs, a father displaced from Gaza City to Muwasi, dumped
water over his head from a flimsy plastic bag — one of the vessels used
to carry water in the camps.
“Outside the tents it is hot and inside the tents it is hot, so we are
forced to drink this water wherever we go,” he said.
Al-Dibs was among many who told The Associated Press they knowingly
drink non-potable water.
The few people still possessing rooftop tanks can’t muster enough water
to clean them, so what flows from their taps is yellow and unsafe, said
Bushra Khalidi, an official with Oxfam, an aid group working in Gaza.
Before the war, the coastal enclave’s more than 2 million residents got
their water from a patchwork of sources. Some was piped in by Mekorot,
Israel’s national water utility. Some came from desalination plants.
Some was pulled from high-saline wells, and some imported in bottles.
Every source has been jeopardized.
Palestinians are relying more heavily on groundwater, which today makes
up more than half of Gaza's supply. The well water has historically been
brackish, but still serviceable for cleaning, bathing, or farming,
according to Palestinian water officials and aid groups.
Now people have to drink it.
The effects of drinking unclean water don’t always appear right away,
said Mark Zeitoun, director general of the Geneva Water Hub, a policy
institute.
“Untreated sewage mixes with drinking water, and you drink that or wash
your food with it, then you’re drinking microbes and can get dysentery,"
Zeitoun said. "If you’re forced to drink salty, brackish water, it just
does your kidneys in, and then you’re on dialysis for decades.”
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A Palestinian girl drinks water from a jerrycan after collecting it
from a water distribution point during a hot summer day with
temperatures reaching 36 °C (97 °F) in Deir al-Balah, in the central
Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Deliveries average less than three liters (12.5 cups) per person per
day — a fraction of the 15-liter (3.3-gallon) minimum humanitarian
groups say is needed for drinking, cooking and basic hygiene. In
February, acute watery diarrhea accounted for less than 20% of
reported illnesses in Gaza. By July, it had surged to 44%, raising
the risk of severe dehydration, according to UNICEF, the U.N.
children’s agency.
System breakdown
Early in the war, residents said deliveries from Israel's water
company Mekorot were curtailed — a claim that Israel has denied.
Airstrikes destroyed some of the transmission pipelines as well as
one of Gaza’s three desalination plants.
Bombardment and advancing troops damaged or cut off wells – to the
point that today only 137 of Gaza’s 392 wells are accessible,
according to UNICEF. Water quality from some wells has deteriorated,
fouled by sewage, the rubble of shattered buildings and the residue
of spent munitions.
Fuel shortages have strained the system, slowing pumps at wells and
the trucks that carry water. The remaining two desalination plants
have operated far below capacity or ground to a halt at times, aid
groups and officials say.
In recent weeks, Israel has taken some steps to reverse the damage.
It delivers water via two of Mekorot's three pipelines into Gaza and
reconnected one of the desalination plants to Israel’s electricity
grid, Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel told The Associated
Press.
Still, the plants put out far less than before the war, Monther
Shoblaq, head of Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, told
AP. That has forced him to make impossible choices.
The utility prioritizes getting water to hospitals and to people.
But that means sometimes withholding water needed for sewage
treatment, which can trigger neighborhood backups and heighten
health risks.
Water hasn’t sparked the same global outrage as limits on food
entering Gaza. But Shoblaq warned of a direct line between the
crisis and potential loss of life.
“It’s obvious that you can survive for some days without food, but
not without water,” he said.
Supply's future
Water access is steadying after Israel's steps. Aid workers have
grown hopeful that the situation won't get worse and could improve.
Southern Gaza could get more relief from a United Arab
Emirates-funded desalination plant just across the border in Egypt.
COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to
Gaza, said it has allowed equipment into the enclave to build a
pipeline from the plant and deliveries could start in a few weeks.
The plant wouldn't depend on Israel for power, but since Israel
holds the crossings, it will control the entry of water into Gaza
for the foreseeable future.
But aid groups warn that access to water and other aid could be
disrupted again by Israel’s plans to launch a new offensive on some
of the last areas outside its military control. Those areas include
Gaza City and Muwasi, where much of Gaza's population is now
located.
In Muwasi's tent camps, people line up for the sporadic arrivals of
water trucks.
Hosni Shaheen, whose family was also displaced from Khan Younis,
already sees the water he drinks as a last resort.
“It causes stomach cramps for adults and children, without
exception," he said. “You don’t feel safe when your children drink
it.”
___
Metz reported from Jerusalem. Alon Berstein contributed reporting
from Kerem Shalom, Israel.
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