Due to the collapse of its water system, Gaza is facing a severe thirst crisis.

• Palestinians are forced to wait in line for hours to get water.
• Twenty people were killed when a truck overturned onto a crowd of people waiting for aid.

GAZA: Gazans struggle through a barren landscape that is still plagued with ruins in order to fetch water for drinking and washing. The water that they are able to collect is painful to carry and is still far below the amount that is necessary in order to remain healthy.

In the words of an international hunger monitor, ‘a famine scenario is unfolding.’ The water crisis in Gaza remains equally dire in the eyes of advocacy groups, despite the global gaze being shifted to the famine.

Some aid agencies provide small desalination units, which supply a small amount of water. However, the majority of water is still collected from wells in an aquifer heavily polluted by sewage and chemicals, which filter through the rubble. This, in turn, spreads diseases like diarrhea and hepatitis.

Most of the infrastructure for water and sanitation has been destroyed, as well as the pumps for the aquifer. The remaining pumps rely on a steady supply of fuel, which is very rare to find.

Students like Moaz Mukhaimar, aged 23, are forced to abandon their education due to the war. He stated that alongside so many others, he walks around a kilometer to fetch water, but to collect the water, he has to queue to collect water for two hours. During the course of a day, he walks this journey three times and is forced to drag the water on a small metal handcart through rough terrain back to his family tent.

Pulling two larger canisters of very brackish water for cleaning and two smaller ones of cleaner water for drinking, he questioned, “How long will we have to stay like this?”

According to his 53-year-old mother, Umm Moaz, the water he gathers is necessary for the 20 members of his extended family who reside in their modest tent community in the central Gaza Strip’s Deir al-Balah. It’s hot, and the kids keep coming and going. They are constantly craving alcohol. “Who knows if we’ll be able to fill up again tomorrow,” she remarked.

As disease spreads, their fight for water is repeated throughout the small, congested area, where almost everyone is living in makeshift shelters or tents without sewage or sanitary facilities and insufficient water for cooking, drinking, and washing.

Water lines

According to Danish Malik, a global water and sanitation official for the Norwegian Refugee Council, “people are basically rationing between whether they want to use a lot for hygiene or they want to use water for drinking,” and “water scarcity is definitely increasing very much each day.”

Many Gazans now spend hours every day just carrying water and waiting in line, frequently vying for a spot in the line. According to Gazans, scuffles have occasionally occurred.

It will supply 600,000 people in southern Gaza with water via a new pipeline financed by the United Arab Emirates. However, connecting might take a few more weeks.

Aid organizations say much more is required. James Elder, a spokesman for UNICEF, claimed that the chronic deprivations were becoming fatal. Dehydration and starvation are no longer consequences of this conflict. They are definitely frontline effects.

Twenty aid workers were killed.

Meanwhile, in the central Gaza Strip, an aid truck overturned on a group of people seeking aid, killing 20 people, according to a statement released by Gaza’s civil defense agency on Wednesday.

“A truck carrying aid overturned around midnight last night, killing 20 people and injuring dozens more… While hundreds of civilians were waiting for aid, “the agency’s spokesperson, Mahmud Bassal, told AFP.

According to Bassal, the truck was traveling on a dangerous road that Israel had previously bombed, which is why the incident happened close to the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Hamas charged Israel with coercing truck drivers to take perilous paths to reach aid distribution centers with the intention to “deliberately… produce starvation and chaos.”

Hamas press office claimed, “Israel strangulates aid distribution while forcing drivers to navigate routes overcrowded with starving civilians who have been awaiting the most basic essentials for weeks.” It further noted, “Hamas media noted that the aforementioned actions lead to desperate crowds surging towards the trucks.”

Published in Daily Pak, August 7th, 2025