Explainers

It’s Getting Grimmer in Gaza: How many days of water, food, power left?

Gaza has run out of clean water as Israel continues to bombard the enclave. Wheat flour is expected to deplete in less than a week and hospitals have no stocks of painkillers

Gauri Ghadi Last Updated:October 18, 2023 20:22:23 IST

Palestinians collect water, amid the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on 14 October. The enclave has run out of clean water, according to the UN. Reuters

In the world’s largest open-air prison, there seems to be no escaping death. For more than 10 days, Gazans have been battling relentless airstrikes from Israel. After the 7 October Hamas attack, Jerusalem has blocked essential supplies to the enclave, which is home to more than two million Palestinians. The total siege means they are running out of water, food, power and medicines.

The death in the Hamas-controlled enclave has been mounting with each passing day. The Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,000 people. This does not include the 500 killed in an explosion at Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday. While Hamas claims that an Israeli airstrike hit the hospital, the Israeli military alleges that a rocket was misfired by other Palestinian militants.

Both Hamas and Israel continue to trade barbs and caught in the crossfire are the ordinary Gazans. A humanitarian crisis is looming large, as there is no power, water and medicines are scarce, and aid is out of reach. How much supply of essentials is left in the strip? We bring you the real picture.

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Water

For Gazans, water is a luxury even in times of peace. Even before the latest flare-up, water supply to the enclave did not meet the World Health Organization’s minimum requirement for daily per capita water consumption, according to a report in Reuters.

The Coastal Aquifer Basin, running along the eastern Mediterranean coast from the northern Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, through Gaza and into Israel, is the enclave’s only natural source of water. The quality of the groundwater in the aquifer has “deteriorated rapidly” because it had been pumped out to meet the demands of Gaza’s large population quicker than it could be replaced by rainwater, the report says quoting a 2020 study in the journal “Water”.

Even before the conflict erupted, 90 per cent of the water was undrinkable, according to the Palestinian water authority. A majority of the population – 97 per cent – relies on unregulated private tankers and small-scale desalination plants for drinking water.

After Hamas’s deadly attack, Israel cut off fresh water supplies to the Gaza Strip. According to the United Nations, severe water shortages have “become a matter of life and death”.

In such a situation, the contaminated water from the aquifer is the only source for Gazans. Three desalination facilities that the enclave relies on have stopped operations because of power restrictions imposed by the blockade.

Reuters reported that desperate families have started drilling private wells. A handful can afford mineral water but several have resorted to buying cheaper treated water from trucks, reports The Guardian.

The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on Tuesday that Gaza’s last seawater desalination plant had shut down. “Concerns over dehydration and waterborne diseases are high given the collapse of water and sanitation services, including today’s shutdown of Gaza’s last functioning seawater desalination plant,” the UNRWA said in a statement on Tuesday.

Six water wells, three water pumping stations and one water reservoir – which collectively served more than 1.1million people – are also out of action, it said.

After US president Joe Biden intervened, Israel said it had decided to renew water supplies to southern Gaza on Sunday. However, Hamas said that Israel had yet to resume water supplies for the Gaza Strip. An Israeli official responded that some water was being provided to an area in the south of the enclave.

Food

According to the World Food Programme, 63 per cent of the people in the Gaza Strip are insecure. This is before the war. Now the blockade has made matters worse.

Bread is a staple of Gazans but wheat flour is expected to deplete in less than a week, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Only one of five flour mills is functional because of a shortage of fuel and lack of electricity.

Local bakeries are unable to operate because of the shortage of ingredients. In the few that are still operating, the wait time was more than 10 hours, The Guardian reported quoting local media. A Gazan man told The Associated Press that he had purchased a kilo of bread which would be shared with his family of 20 to 30 members.

People have no choice but to ration their food, some have resorted to eating once a day with children getting priority.

The World Food Programme has distributed some fresh bread to shelters in Gaza. But food that can feed 244,000 people is waiting at the Egypt-Gaza Rafah border for passage, reports Al-Jazeera.

“Food is running out, warehouses are all empty. In the few supermarkets that are open, most of the shelves are bare,” said Al-Jazeera’s Safwat Kahlout from Gaza.

Electricity

The enclave has two main sources of electricity, the Gaza power plant and power lines from Israel. Both have stopped functioning. Israel cut off electricity when the siege started and the local power plant shut down a week ago as it ran out of fuel to generate electricity.

Hospitals are on the verge of collapse as they are likely to run out of power, threatening thousands of lives. On Monday, the UN warned that hospitals could exhaust generator fuel in less than 24 hours.

Search and rescue efforts have also been hampered because of the lack of electricity, reports The Guardian. The Palestinian Civil Defence, the emergency and rescue organisation, said that a large number of people remain trapped under the rubble and finding them is difficult without access to power.

Aid

About 63 per cent of the population of Gaza depends on the UN and other aid groups for food, medicine and other basic services. Now the blockade prevents these essentials from moving in and out of the enclosed area with the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the enclave being shut for a week.

Hundreds of tonnes of aid remain stuck on the Egyptian side of the crossing despite growing international calls to provide relief to Gazan civilians, according to a report in The Washington Post.

On Monday, there were reports of Egypt, Israel and the US reaching a deal to open the crossing. But Hamas and Jerusalem denied reaching such an agreement.

According to UNRWA, more than 80 per cent of the Gaza population is now living in poverty.

The lack of medicine is concerning, especially as the number of those wounded increases. Essential services like dialysis have already been discontinued and hospitals have run out of painkillers, reports Al-Jazeera.

Blood banks have only two weeks’ worth of supply left, said Dr Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for its office in the West Bank and Gaza.

The situation is dire. Gaza is screaming SOS. But is Israel and the world listening?

With inputs from agencies