Fact:
This week Israel stopped the entry of fuel into the Gaza Strip. Power outages of 16–20 hours per day will further deteriorate the area’s fragile health system, limited sanitation services, and severe lack of access to drinking water.
Chronic electricity shortages have meant that pumps don’t work, causing waste to flow through neighborhoods and large sewage lakes to form. Two years ago a sewage lake overflowed, drowning five people in a nearby village.
Even when the pumps are working, the equivalent of 43 Olympic-size swimming pools of poorly treated sewage is dumped into the Mediterranean every day. The sea is more than 70% polluted.
Because Israel destroyed and has refused to repair the Gaza Strip’s sanitation infrastructure, water contamination is responsible for at least 26% of all disease.
Israel’s ongoing blockade restricts nearly all the materials critically needed to repair Gaza’s sewage-treatment facilities.
Source: Imemc
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