Israel's water crisis traced to Gaza infrastructure destruction, sewage pollution

Israel's desalination plants ground to a halt this month when an algae bloom of exceptional scale clogged the filters at five of the country's six major facilities. The bloom stretched across the Mediterranean for sixty miles, a toxic mat of microalgae and cyanobacteria fed by a single, catastrophic source: untreated sewage pouring into the sea from Gaza at a rate of forty-five thousand cubic metres per day.

The sewage flows because Israel's bombardment has destroyed ninety percent of Gaza's water and sanitation infrastructure, according to Médecins Sans Frontières. Every major treatment plant in the territory is now out of service. The pipes that once carried drinking water from Israeli-controlled desalination plants into Gaza were cut at the start of the war and have only partially reopened. The aquifer beneath Gaza, which supplied eighty percent of the territory's water before the conflict, is now contaminated by seawater and wastewater and cannot be used. What remains is a population of roughly two million people dependent on water trucks, jerry cans, and rationed supplies that force an impossible arithmetic: drink enough to survive, or save water to wash and prevent disease.

Nas al-Barawi, a thirty-four-year-old mother of five living in Beit Lahia, described the daily reality. She and her family carry water in heavy containers or stand in queues for hours. Much of what they obtain is unsafe. Her children suffer recurring stomach infections, diarrhoea, and skin rashes. The sewage networks that once carried waste away from homes have failed or been destroyed, leaving wastewater flowing between tents and through the streets where people live.

Omar Shatat, deputy executive director of Gaza's Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, laid out the scale of the collapse. All five wastewater treatment plants are offline. Beyond the forty-five thousand cubic metres flowing daily into the sea, another fifteen thousand cubic metres of untreated waste seeps into the groundwater each day from soakaway pits scattered through informal camps. "This is a catastrophic situation environmentally and from a public-health perspective," Shatat said. The sea is heavily polluted, and those suffering most are Gaza's residents and displaced people, who live in direct contact with the highest concentrations of sewage.

The consequences have crossed the border. Zalul, an Israeli environmental organization dedicated to protecting the country's seas and shores, traced the connection plainly: the wastewater contains nitrogen and phosphorus, nutrients that feed the microalgae and cyanobacteria blooming in Israeli waters. "Pollution does not recognise political borders," the organization stated. Jack Gilron, a desalination expert at Ben-Gurion University's Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, warned that the current crisis reinforces the need to prepare against ongoing threats to Israel's main source of drinking water along the southern Mediterranean coast.

In Israel, authorities have ordered people to use water sparingly until the system is restored. Water supplies have been cut in the south of the country. Farmers have been told to stop irrigation, a restriction economists say will drive food prices higher. The immediate crisis may last weeks.

In Gaza, conditions are worsening as winter approaches. Rats have infested parts of the territory for months, thriving in raw sewage and rubbish accumulating around overcrowded camps. Shaimaa al-Katari, thirty-seven, displaced to al-Mawasi, described streets pooling with stagnant water from washing dishes and clothes, with no place to dispose of it. Algae and mosquitoes spread around the pools. Foul smells, insects, and rodents have become constant. Pat Griffiths, the International Committee of the Red Cross's spokesperson in Gaza City, said the situation would likely deteriorate further with winter's arrival. "Palestinians live surrounded by wastewater. It's all around them. It's where they eat, where they get water, where they walk," he said.

Nada Majdalani, Palestine director of EcoPeace Middle East, an environmental peacebuilding organization, warned of a broader threat. Cases of hepatitis A are already rising in Gaza. "I believe we are on the verge of a catastrophe," she said. "And a serious outbreak in Gaza would not necessarily remain within Gaza's borders." Environmental groups have urged Cogat, the Israeli agency responsible for Gaza's administration, to help restore the territory's sewage system and allow wastewater treatment in Israeli-controlled areas. Cogat did not respond to requests for comment. The crisis now binds both populations to a single environmental fact: the damage in one territory flows directly into the other.