Heat and thirst drive families in Gaza to drink water that makes them sick[html]
Enaam Al Majdoub uses water collected from a distribution point to bathe her 3-year-old granddaughter, Jourieh, while her son Zaki uses some of the water for cooking in their family tent in Gaza City on Tuesday, August 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)2025-08-15T12:16:37Z
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 data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-war-hamas-muwasi-humanitarian-2de77ea9095d2c680f57f77ad395917c">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.
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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)
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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)
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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. data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-aid-cutoff-netanyahu-hunger-war-940ceea2c2b754d197a4f07c0cad86de">Limits on fuel imports and data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-palestinians-war-news-ba90f0de3d4f64a1762d1a39f787817f">electricity have hampered the operation of data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/general-news-international-news-24214d50b3344675bc2b36ab00c5c8dd">desalination plants while data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-anniversary-destruction-takeaways-a1ae8d316633fd7d1f3fe24cc527a2ee">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 data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/israel-palestinians-gaza-heat-wave-141a5397a3ed771ec3329255a55c459b">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.
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In the summer heat, Palestinian children carry jerrycans after collecting water from a distribution point in Gaza City, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
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In the summer heat, Palestinian children carry jerrycans after collecting water from a distribution point in Gaza City, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
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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 data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-palestinians-kidney-dialysis-health-war-c72ce95bf0d8f9b2c719a01aeb04341e">dialysis for decades.”
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.
