Stories from gaza
“Ihab Saleh, a squash and cucumber farmer living in Ein al-Beida, a Palestinian village of about 1,600 people located in the northern part of the West Bank, is one of hundreds of thousands of people whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by Israeli water restrictions. Over the past 25 years, he has seen the local spring gradually dry up after the Israeli company Mekorot drilled two wells near the neighbouring Palestinian community of Bardala, to serve Mehola, an Israeli settlement. The amount of water the Israeli authorities allocate to the village has been decreasing over the years, he says, and has been fully cut off on numerous occasions. Despite an agreement to compensate the Palestinian villages of Bardala and Ein al-Beida, since the mid-1970s, Israel has significantly reduced the amount of water available to both communities… Ihab Saleh recounted to Amnesty International researchers how, at the beginning of September 2017, Israeli authorities cut the water supply to the village for five days claiming that residents had taken more than allotted to them through unauthorized means. Ihab’s crops died due to this cut-off, with damages to his business of around 10,000 NIS (approximately 2,820 USD). He says there was no notice before the supply was cut, and there was no drinking water for any of the residents who had to travel five km to a neighbouring village to bring water in trucks. ‘In this village we want peace, whatever the Palestinian Authority says - we do. Whatever the Israeli army says - we do…. all we want to do is farm our land,’ he told Amnesty International.”
Story from Amnesty International's website
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"Eight-year-old Sawsan and her family live in a tin-roofed shack made from metal sheets. In summer, she cannot stay inside as it becomes unbearably hot. In winter, the place is flooded with rainwater mixed with sewage from the street.
'My father is jobless, so we cannot afford to buy water which is safe for drinking,' says Sawsan. 'Often we have no choice but to drink salty water from the tap.... Sometimes my brothers go to water filling stations run by charities in our neighbourhood, where they can fill some jars and bottles with clean water. It does not last long,' she says.
Sawsan’s family of 11 is trapped in poverty, like countless others in the Gaza Strip. Seventy per cent of people depend on humanitarian aid, and the unemployment rate has reached a staggering 42 per cent – 60 per cent among youth. Most of the two million residents – half of them children under the age of 18 – face mounting challenges to access essential services, including safe drinking water and sanitation."
Story from Unicef's website
