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With Desalination Plants Destroyed, Families in Gaza Are Drinking Salty Water | Gazze'deki Tuz Arıtma Tesislerinin Yıkılmasıyla Aileler Tuzlu Su İçiyor

 

With Desalination Plants Destroyed, Families in Gaza Are Drinking Salty Water

By Eman Abu Zayed

This article was originally published by Truthout

“The water is salty, and sometimes it smells strange, but we have no other choice,” 17-year-old Ruba Al-Amsha said.

Since the beginning of the Israeli genocide and the imposition of a total blockade on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, water desalination plants have almost completely shut down due to severe fuel shortages.

According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, more than 90 percent of water and desalination facilities have gone out of service. As infrastructure systems collapse, thousands of displaced families are left with no option but to rely on contaminated, salty, and undrinkable water sources.

In the camps and tents, life is no longer measured by hours of sleep, but by the number of liters of water that arrive — or fail to arrive.

Six Children Contend With Water Unfit for Human Use

Rahma Fadi, a mother of six living in a tent near Al-Maghazi refugee camp, told me: “When my children cry from thirst, I give them salty water and pray for God’s mercy. What else can I do?”

In an interview earlier this winter, Fadi was able to tell me about her family’s ordeal. Since the beginning of the genocide, she has been unable to access clean water. With desalination plants out of service for many months, her daily routine — and that of her children — has become a long wait for a rare water truck that may or may not arrive. Even when the truck does arrive, the water is often unsafe to drink, stored in plastic jerrycans surrounded by flies. But she has no other choice.

As I spoke with her, Fadi sat with her six children in a worn-out tent on the outskirts of Al-Maghazi refugee camp after being displaced from their home in northern Gaza, specifically the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood. She built the tent from pieces of fabric and plastic stretched tightly over flimsy wooden poles. Inside, the air is heavy with the smell of damp earth mixed with dust and drifting smoke.

The pale faces of Fadi and her children reflect the weight of harsh, unrelenting days: 10-year-old Salma, 8-year-old Mohammed, 5-year-old Ghada, 3-year-old twins Omar and Yaqeen, and baby Zeinab, who has not yet completed her first year. All of them wear tattered clothes that offer little protection from the heat of the day or the cold of night.

Rahma Fadi’s husband, 41-year-old Akram Fadi, used to work as a taxi driver. He sustained an injury to his right leg from an Israeli tank shell while fleeing toward the southern part of Gaza and, due to the severe shortage of medical equipment and treatment capacities, doctors were forced to amputate his leg. As a result, the burden of sustaining the family has fallen almost entirely on Rahma, who had never worked before the war. Today, she stands in his place in long water lines, waiting for hours just to fill a few containers that must last the entire day.

Kidney Patients Are Caught in the Crossfire of Israel’s War on Gaza’s Water

On December 24, 2025, I visited an area in Nuseirat where 17-year-old Ruba Al-Amsha lives with her family in a small tent they set up after being displaced from the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood in Gaza.

In the late afternoon, Al-Amsha sat at the entrance of the tent, surrounded by empty jerrycans and old plastic containers used to store water. Flies swarmed constantly around the tent and the containers, never leaving.

Speaking in a low voice as she adjusted her position to ease the pain, she said: “I’ve been feeling pain for some time on the right side, around my kidney, especially when I drink water from the tank.”

She added, “The water is salty, and sometimes it smells strange, but we have no other choice.”

Al-Amsha has not yet been able to see a doctor due to transportation difficulties, but her kidney pain worsens day by day.

According to data released by Gaza’s Ministry of Health and government medical offices, between 40 percent and 42 percent of kidney failure patients have died due to the interruption of dialysis services caused by water and electricity shortages and the destruction of medical facilities.

In the absence of clean water, tents have turned into breeding grounds for disease. What Ruba Al-Amsha is experiencing is not an isolated case, but a reflection of a worsening health crisis unfolding in silence — paid for with pain by fragile bodies.

Providing Water to Families in Gaza Means Becoming a Target for Israel

This December I also met Mahmoud Abu Rayan, a water truck driver who bears the weighty responsibility of delivering this vital resource to families in the camps. He continues his work under extremely dangerous conditions, trying to ease the suffering of Gaza’s residents who rely on unsafe water sources.

The 42-year-old father of three continues his daily mission despite fuel shortages and the constant threat of drones, transporting water to camps that lack any safe source of it.

“Sometimes I come home exhausted and overwhelmed by everything I’ve seen, and my children ask me if I’m OK. I tell them, ‘I’m here for you,’ but honestly, I haven’t been able to sleep these days,” he says.

Abu Rayan used to work in a car repair shop before the war began, but he left his job to dedicate himself to water transport after realizing the severity of the escalating crisis.

Watching the tanker unload its water in front of a tent in central Deir al-Balah, he told me: “I know I’m putting myself at risk, but if I don’t bring the water, what are the children supposed to drink?”

In Gaza, before the ceasefire was announced, water truck drivers were frequently targets of the Israeli occupation.

Abu Rayan may now be considered a “threat” to Israel because he has frequently been a witness to the Israeli military’s killing of innocent people, including children and elderly people carrying empty jerrycans, waiting for water to arrive.

“Sometimes I run out of fuel before finishing the route, and I have to walk back or ask for help,” he says.

The shortage of water, in conjunction with the shortage of fuel, makes providing water almost impossible.

Abu Rayan also confirms that random pumping and transporting water in unsterilized tankers increases the risk of contamination, but he adds, “People are thirsty, and they have no other choice.”

Health Workers See Firsthand the Devastation Wrought by Gaza’s Water Crisis

Mahmoud Abu Rayan’s struggle to deliver water intersects with that of Sajid Ashraf, an employee at Gaza’s Ministry of Health and Al-Zahra Municipality. Ashraf, who is married and has two children, works daily on the front lines dealing with the consequences of the water crisis.

Ashraf explained in an interview with me that the shutdown of desalination plants due to fuel shortages has intensified the water crisis, leading to a rise in waterborne diseases in densely populated areas.

“We are witnessing an increase in cases of diarrhea and poisoning, especially among children and the elderly,” he said.

“Working under these conditions is extremely difficult. The lack of resources and the immense pressure on the health system make our mission more challenging, but we do everything we can to provide medical and preventive support,” he added.

Ashraf also spoke about his efforts at Al-Zahra Municipality to help provide water and clean public spaces to reduce the spread of disease: “Despite all the difficulties, we try to be a support system for the community during this crisis.”

This Crisis Demands an Urgent Humanitarian Response

On my way back to Nuseirat, I passed one of the camps near Deir al-Balah, where families stood in long lines in front of temporary water tanks. Children carried old plastic jerrycans, while women struggled to fill them amid dirt and debris surrounding the tanks.

The air was thick with dust and the smell of dry earth, and the sounds of children crying and shouting filled the space.

Under the scorching sun, people anxiously waited for the arrival of a water truck, which could be delayed for hours due to fuel shortages and restrictions on movement.

The water crisis in Gaza is not merely a technical or logistical problem — it is a profound humanitarian catastrophe affecting the lives of 2 million people every single day. As the blockade continues and fuel remains scarce, countless lives hang in the balance between thirst and danger. An urgent international response is needed to ease this suffering and ensure access to clean water for all those in need.

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This article was originally published by Truthout and is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Please maintain all links and credits in accordance with our republishing guidelines.