We live in Beir al-Sha'r in Zanoun.
I live in a tent, where the situation is very bad.
My husband doesn’t work.
I have one child, and I am seven months pregnant with a girl. God willing.
[He has] malnutrition. He isn’t gaining weight and often gets sick with the flu.
He also has skin diseases all over his body.
He was never like this before.
[The lack of water] is affecting the hygiene situation.
It affects my baby's hygiene, of course.
Because he must be cleaned [often] at this age.
His hygiene is important to me and to him.
Not being able to properly wash and clean the house is disastrous.
We buy the water from the neighborhood.
We buy a container of water with 2 shekels [a quarter of one Euro], and we have managed with it.
We use around 1 to 1.5 containers of [drinking] water
and around half a container for washing the clothes, socks, dishes,
bathing the boy and cleaning the house.
I don't allow him to play outside of the tent,
but he still got infected [with scabies].
[We have] very little water.
We use wipe instead of water.
We save some water for other things.
We’ve been suffering for a long time during the war.
And now we are suffering even more .
Because there is no water.
The situation is very bad for the water.
There is nothing.
Water is everything in the world.
You must do the washing.
You must do the laundry.
You must go to the bathroom.
You must change your clothes
All of these things.
My son doesn't get tired so often.
but with the shortage in water, lack of hygiene,
and living in a tent, he gets sick three times per month.
The water distribution point is one kilometer away from here.
No one can carry the water,
expect my eldest child who is in the 6th grade,
and he cannot carry a big amount of water.
We need 100 liters of water daily:
to wash the clothes, clean the bathroom, and even that we don’t do every day.
My son’s hands started hurt from carrying the water
so, his grandfather offered to rent a cart that can help to bring the water
because there is no one to help.
They lost their father eight months ago, and they have no one to take care of carrying the water.
The grandfather is in his 60s and no one is helping him.
They [the municipality] supported us a bit and expanded water pipes,
but even the water pipes are far away from us.
When there is no water, there is no hygiene,
they [children] will get scabies, skin diseases, allergy.
I have six children: three boys and three girls.
hey all got sick, me included.
I went to the doctor at MSF clinic, and they gave me medicine.
They told me it’s a scabies infection due to the lack of water.
They gave me the medication, and I felt better after;
I also gave it to the kids, and they all felt better too.
But the two little ones...
The little ones play with the sand.
Whenever I want to take them out, they come back,
because we live on the street.
We live in difficult conditions,
and every two or three days, we visit MSF clinic.
Sometimes they bring ointment cream, sometimes they bring medicine.
The girl suffers from pain and can feel pain in the chest.
This is all from the sand, and lack of hygiene.
And lack of water.
So the access of water sanitation in Gaza is currently very limited.
Most of the infrastructure,
the civil infrastructure has been destroyed.
Here in Beit Lahiya, it's estimated that 60% of the boreholes that we're giving,
like drinking and domestic water to population, has been completely damaged.
There is another thing and is that is not possible to produce,
there is no natural sources of water in Gaza.
All the water for being drinkable needs to pass through a process
of like reverse osmosis in the salination plants.
And those desalination plants, the main ones,
two over three has been completely destroyed.
That means that only little desalination plants are running and providing
drinkable water for people, which is also not completely spread.
The humanitarian actors and the authorities
are trying to reestablish system, but with the current situation of supply,
that's almost impossible, which means that people are either
drinking water, that it's not up to the human consumption
or they are just not having enough water.
And it's also in terms of sanitation,
houses of people has been destroyed.
So like access to toilets, as simple thing as a toilet is not warranty.
And the cost of constructing new toilet is very elevated because
construction materials are not allowed to enter in here,
which means that people have very limited [access] to clean water,
very limited access to a proper toilet.
And the spread of diseases is a is a real danger.
Additionally, the during the cease fire, what has not changed
is that spare parts for the desalination unit,
generators, pumps for the for the boreholes have not been allowed to access
so critical items that are necessary for reestablish
the fully functional system are not being allowed
neither in ceasefire
neither during the war.
Water tank has not been allowed.
And key point, spare parts and new desalination unit has not been allowed.
and that will be for respond only due to the acute emergency.
If we want to face now a ceasefire approach
and we want to give more long term options,
we will need big generator and big infrastructure.
The Gaza pre-war infrastructure is pretty complex.
It is not something that can be made in a quick and dirty way.
So it needs to also respond with this kind of items.
And we need to think that
most of the water sanitation items are considered dual use.
They are not allowed,
and it is very complex to make them arrive here.
Yeah when we are talking about dual use items,
it can be from the most simple thing like chlorine for disinfecting the water
to big water containers to 30-kilobyte generator
for for bringing for power a reverse osmosis plant.
So yeah, obviously, like water and sanitation is very linked with energy.
Desalination plants, trucks generate like these large pumps,
whatever activity in water sanitation need energy for operate.
and whatever is related to energy is also very restrained.
So new generators, battery for the generators, spare parts, solar system
are considered dual use and are very limited on access.
Which means that you need to kind of Frankenstein one
or take the spare parts of one generator for arrange other two generators.
But you cannot bring a new unit, which is what it will be really needed.
One of examples of this like lack of energy resources is
that there are three big desalination units in Gaza.
One of them was directly connected with energy, but it has been shut down,
which means that last week we were receiving 17,000 meter cubes of water.
This week they can only produce 2500
and that's in a massive amount of people that are not receiving drinking water.
So fuel supply has been cut, electricity has been cut
and spare parts for run the rest of the energy on Gaza city are not accessing.
And that directly impact all the water and sanitation activity of course.
So maintaining some of the infrastructure, but the North has been inaccessible.
And the main desalination unit in the coast has been completely destroyed
during the war.
Most of the boreholes in the area has been completely destroyed in the war
and it is now the first time that humanitarians and authorities
have access to those locations and see if we can put a solution for some of them.
So the north is much more compromised in terms of access to water and sanitation.
Also because it has been very low population during the war.
But after the ceasefire, everybody has to go back to their houses.
So now we have a massive amount of population living in the north
with very little infrastructure and we are running for repair many of them.
But the reality is that without the needed supply lines, we will just not be able.
or it is going to be very slow
So I think one of the main constraints for bringing the water
and sanitation infrastructure back
is going to be the inability to bring those items in.