Israel using water as weapon of war as Gaza supply plummets by 94%, creating deadly health catastrophe: Oxfam
A new Oxfam report reveals how Israel has been systematically weaponizing water against Palestinians in Gaza, showing disregard for human life and international law.
The report, Water War Crimes, finds that Israel’s cutting of external water supply, systematic destruction of water facilities and deliberate aid obstruction have reduced the amount of water available in Gaza by 94% to 4.74 litres a day per person – just under a third of the recommended minimum in emergencies and less than a single toilet flush.
Oxfam analysis also found:
- Israeli military attacks have damaged or destroyed five water and sanitation infrastructure sites every three days since the start of the war.
- The destruction of water and electricity infrastructure and restrictions on entry of spare parts and fuel (on average a fifth of the required amount is allowed in) saw water production drop by 84% in Gaza. External supply from Israel’s national water company Mekorot fell by 78%.
- Israel has destroyed 70% of all sewage pumps and 100% of all wastewater treatment plants, as well as the main water quality testing laboratories in Gaza, and restricted the entry of Oxfam water testing equipment.
- Gaza City has lost nearly all its water production capacity, with 88% of its water wells and 100% of its desalination plants damaged or destroyed.
The report also highlighted the dire impact of this extreme lack of clean water and sanitation on Palestinians’ health, with more than a quarter (26%) of Gaza’s population falling severely ill from easily preventable diseases.
In January, the International Court of Justice demanded that Israel immediately improve humanitarian access in light of a plausible genocide in Gaza. Since then, Oxfam has witnessed firsthand Israel’s obstruction of a meaningful humanitarian response, which is killing Palestinian civilians.
Oxfam Water and Sanitation Specialist Lama Abdul Samad said it was clear that Israel had created a devastating humanitarian emergency resulting in Palestinian civilian deaths.
“We’ve already seen Israel’s use of collective punishment and its use of starvation as a weapon of war. Now we are witnessing its weaponizing of water, which is already having deadly consequences.
“But the deliberate restriction of access to water is not a new tactic. The Israeli Government has been depriving Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza of safe and sufficient water for many years,” she said.
“The widespread destruction and significant restrictions on aid delivery in Gaza impacting access to water and other essentials for survival, underscores the urgent need for the international community to take decisive action to prevent further suffering by upholding justice and human rights, including those enshrined in the Geneva and Genocide Conventions.”
Monther Shoblak, General Manager of the Gaza Strip’s water utility CMWU, said:
“My colleagues and I have been living through a nightmare these past nine months, but we still feel it’s our responsibility and duty to ensure everybody in Gaza is getting their minimum right of clean drinking water. It’s been very difficult, but we are determined to keep trying – even when we witness our colleagues being targeted and killed by Israel while undertaking their work.”
Oxfam is calling for urgent action including an immediate and permanent ceasefire; for Israel to allow a full and unfettered humanitarian response; and for Israel to foot the reconstruction bill for water and sanitation infrastructure.
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Return to home pageAnd the world stands by, watching a well documented genocide, doing nothing. All of us, on the wrong side of history. Is this the end of human decency, and the start of chaos?
We now know for sure that the stolen nation that is jokingly called ‘israel’ will be recorded in history as no better than the nazis who tried to wipe them out of existence only 80 odd years ago. Very strange that they can’t see the comparison. Or is it that they simply don’t care about others think of them? In fact, their tactics seem to come straight out of Hitler’s playbook. I’d say that PoS Netanyahu could quote Mein Kampf from cover to cover. The IDF is just another name for the Gestapo.
This comes as no surprise whatsoever. Glad it’s been enunciated by Oxfam.
Have not heard a whisper from ‘western’ governments or the mainstream ‘western’ mainstream media. Apparently all complicit in the cover-up and contribution to the Netanyahu, Likud and IDF planned genocide. I hope they all face their day before a war crimes tribunal, to be named, shamed and prosecuted.
Just think of the paroxysms of orgasmic joy that await Netanyahu, Putin, Xi, and other assorted right wing thugs, once the orange maniac, backed by his horde of fanatical extremist nut jobs, take over the reins of power in the US. We’re fucked!
The support for zionist murder and inhumanty is quiet, and few areas of politics or media want to say much, especially obvious truth. The legal and existing Palestine up to May 1948 has been criminally ignored and betrayed. This continues to be a crime.
The lack of any constructive action by Western governments or the United Nations and the imminent return of a Trump US administration seems to be saying to Netanyahu ‘go for it, we won’t stand in your way’.
I was quite surprised when Fatima Payman refused to support a Senate vote with a Labor amendment saying that Australia would recognise a Palestinian state as part of an enduring peace and a two state solution. I now read that Payman and others have given up on the prospect of a two-state solution as the Netanyahu government have ruled this out. It now seems that the Greens have adopted the policy posited by Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi that Australia should adopt the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) approach to Israel but neither major party would support this.
Unless I’m misreading the situation, it seems that the world leaders, to their eternal shame, have given up on Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank and are quite relaxed about the US recommencing the supply of 500 lb bombs which Israel as we all know will use to destroy infrastructure, kill and maim Palestinian civilians including women and children.
I feel deeply ashamed !
We dont need a judge, and jury to tell us that Israel is committing genocide, and war crimes each and every day.
And good luck with telling us that they can claim immunity from both criticism and future boycotts as a consequence.
We are all having to come to terms with the media penetration harping on how the Jewish people suffer the most always.
That and the memory of past holocaust will now be diminished in historical significance, and replaced with the suffering of the Arab peoples, at the hand of the Jews
The Netanyahu regime has left an indelible stain on his faith, and its followers who have proved to be less than human in full view of the entire world.
The deplorables.
The GENOCIDE of 38,000+ Palestinian mainly women & children by Bibi the ZION@ZI Butcher and the amoral ZION@ZI IDF is the publicly stated policy of the ZION@ZI Israeli Knesset using military equipment supplied by the US military from US arms manufacturers who see huge profits accruing on the pain & suffering of other persons. But when has any morality ever worried arms manufacturers of the USA (United States of Apartheid) military industrial complex?
BAN + DIVEST + SANCTION = BDS ALL ISRAELI GOODS & SERVICES
On Wednesday Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposing “the establishment of a Palestinian state” or a two state solution – the vote was 68 to 9.
So, if it wasn’t clear before, it is now : Israel will not under any circumstances adopt a two state solution and will continue on its genocidal path with the apparent acceptance and, it seems, the approval, of the international community.
Australia whilst condemning this vote and its implications has yet to accept the reality that a two state solution is not going to happen and we need to rethink our posture as does the UN and the US.
Israel has immigration laws that grant privileges based exclusively on religion & race.
Israel practices military conscription, and the IDF has regularly been credibly accused of serially committing serious human rights abuses and outright warcrimes throughout occupied territories.
Australia currently has existent dual-citizenship arrangements with the state of Israel.
Meanwhile, back in La La Land, the Chief Dementor claims that nobody has done as much as he has to help the Palestinians. As has been noted so many times, you can’t make this sh^t up!
Allowing Israel to bomb these people into oblivion by supplying them billions of dollars worth of weaponry and then claiming a few million bucks makes you the good Samaritan … isn’t this what they call cognitive dissonance? Whatever. He’s demented. Talk about a ship of fools, or should it be a ship of cruels?
There is something radically wrong with Australian politics when both Australian major political parties can have unwavering support for and totally agree on three things. The 3 things are 1. That genocidal apartheid of the Palestinian people is OK by them.
2. The starving to death of Palestinian children is OK by them.
3. Thar war crimes committed by the pariah state of Zionist Israel while trashing international law is OK by them.
If Australian politicians from the ALP and L/NP do mot understand the basic premise of the Christian values of right from wrong, then how can we trust them with our vote?
ajogrady, it’s all good, mate. They start each day at work with the Lord’s Prayer. That absolves them from any tricky issues of conscience or conflict. A bit like how the Mick’s go into a wooden box and mumble their sins to the kiddy-fiddler sitting on the other side of the hutch, after which the fiddly-kiddler mutters a bit of medieval chicanery in reply, and then you’re good to go. A system that’s been around for centuries… why change something when you’re on to a good thing?
A tacit acceptance of evil is at the heart of much of the tragedy of the human condition, along with a lack of courage to face this moral failure: radical change in these two parameters is necessary for anything to change in a positive sense.
The two state solution is no longer a viable option, there is no land able to be divided up to form the second state. The only viable solution for Netanyahu is the complete eradication of Palestinians in the land that God gave Abraham bach a couple of thousand years ago… oh hang on that’s mythology not reality.
Today I was chatting with someone who mentioned the Ten Commandments. When we read the text in Exodus of that ‘event, we should wonder who is being protected by those commandments. Read on a couple of chapters and a bunch of people didn’t want the Israelites to venture through their lands and the same god who said ‘you shall not kill’ said to kill every last one of them. Go on just a bit further about 40 years along the time line and that same god said to kill every living being in Jericho except Rahab and her family, go forward just a little further in the book of Joshua and another mob stood in their way and the instruction was to kill every one except virgins, take them as your wives. The laws apply to god’s people only, any one else is fair game. as he claims the land from the river to the sea.
Go back in time, just a few months in this conflict and we hear Netanyahu quote those passages .
These are GOD’S PEOPLE and that gives them absolute god given power to take back the land. The only lives of any value are those who have had their foreskins chopped of on the 8th day. Oh and their wives and daughters.
Mythology is a wonderful thing to justify genocide.
And all the good christians say AMEN.
Fucking hypocrisy.!
Overnight the International Court of Justice has issued an advisory opinion ruling that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible”.
The court said Israel has no right to sovereignty of the territories, is violating international laws against acquiring territory by force and is impeding Palestinians’ right to self-determination. Whilst the ICJ has no powers to enforce its judgement it said other nations were obliged not to “render aid or assistance in maintaining” Israel’s presence in the territory.
The court’s opinion was sought in a 2022 request from the United Nations General Assembly. It will now be for the UN General Assembly and the Security Council to give this judgement some teeth which, at the very least should mean international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) although the US, no matter who the new President is, would be unlikely to give BDS its support.
But there is still the opportunity for International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his cronies and for the Hamas criminals.
Yep, It’s a supremacist, lying, thieving death cult writ large. Exported by roman Christians to all quarters of the Mediterranean and Euro-west and the north over two millennia. Originally saving then annihilating Jews, then, in a deal, a mock apologia, installing them as a Praetorian guard at the gateway to the East, and to Africa.
The Arabs, and those of the East and South have a longer, more intellectual and collaborative approach to its spread of influence, but have continuously been met with brutality, murder and theft by the Christians and their armies, whose tyrannies are also wrought upon their own until they’re subjugated into the cover of self-righteous bullshit.
As for religion, In the ‘west’ the retreat from Christianity is 20% to increase in No Religion 20% over 20 years, and in India the retreat from Hinduism is 6% to increase in No Religion 13%, and Islam 45% over 60 years. In China the predominance is No Religion (and folk lore) 74% and Buddhism 16%.
But now global communication, science and the various writs of history are peeling away the cover of lies used by aristocrats and royals and their religious collaborators. As great change nears, emancipation as always is met by chaos injected by those clinging to old power. Exemplified by the madness afoot in the old imperia of France, Britain and Russia – all hoist by their own petard, the crumbling hegemon of America and it’s hubristic mobs of puritanical evangelists, and the resurgent battle of dynastic elites via Hindutva in Modi’s India.
Their precarity is surely brought on by their treachery. So embedded with supremacist’s lies now exposed, that the madding crowd would not believe them if they retreated to peace and universal well-being, so they go on terrified preparing for onslaught.
Any other state seeking to unshackle itself from the old gruesome power regimes, has a very fine line to navigate – like walking a tightrope above a pit of starved robotic crocodiles.
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