Oum Nahed Abou Shar no longer sleeps at night. Because of the bombings, of course, but also because of the foul smell and the swarms of flies in the Gaza Strip, where a health crisis threatens to strike, in the tenth month of war.
This is what the Dutch peace-promoting NGO PAX fears, which claims in a report published on Thursday that the Gaza Strip is now “drowned” under a mountain of waste and rubble, vectors of diseases and contamination of all kinds.
“We only suffer, we don’t live,” laments Umm Nahed Abu Shar, a 45-year-old mother, in a tent in a displaced persons camp in Deir al-Balah, in the centre of the small Palestinian territory devastated by the war between Israel and Hamas, which began on 7 October.
“Heat, diseases, flies, mosquitoes […]”All this hurts us,” she told AFP.
These days, “we can’t sleep at night because of the smell of sewage,” she says, while the pumping stations stopped working on Tuesday due to lack of fuel, according to the Deir el-Balah town hall.
In a Gaza Strip on its knees, already deprived of electricity by Israel for nine months of siege, the municipality fears a “health and environmental catastrophe” for more than 700,000 people.
For Ms. Abou Shar, it is already a reality. Her children, she says, are “constantly sick because of something that is spread through the garbage.”
In addition to the hunger that plagues Gaza’s 2.4 million Palestinians, there are now risks of scabies, chickenpox, skin rashes and the spread of lice, doctors on the ground say.
Water, a “weapon of war”
Oum Youssef Abou al-Qumsan is also among the displaced people in Deir el-Balah. This 60-year-old grandmother says she leads a life of misery there, “between the rubbish and the insects”.
Almost every day, she waits in line to see a nurse. She takes her grandchildren there. Medicines can still be found, “but we don’t know if it’s safe to eat or drink” water, she worries.
According to a report by the NGO Oxfam published on Thursday, the quantity of water available in Gaza has collapsed by 94% since October 7, the date of the unprecedented attack by Hamas commandos in southern Israel which triggered the war.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
In response, Israel launched an offensive in the Palestinian territory, which has so far killed 38,848 people, mostly civilians, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza government.
On the ground, Oxfam denounces, “Israel is using water as a weapon of war”, causing “a deadly health catastrophe”. The quantity of water available to a Gazan is now only 4.74 liters per day, or “less than a third of the minimum quantity recommended in emergency situations.”
“We are suffering from the nauseating smell of waste, the smoke (from the fires and bombings) and the heat,” said Muhammad al-Kahlot of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza.
The issue of waste, which is piling up in a territory relentlessly pounded by the Israeli army, carries a deep and long-term threat, according to PAX, which for its study analyzed satellite images showing 225 open-air dumps.
PAX warns of the formation of a “chemical soup” fueled by heavy metals accumulated from bombing after bombing, which could end up contaminating groundwater and soil.
“If Gaza is in imminent danger, the entire region could soon face serious ecosystem and public health problems,” PAX predicts.