Gaza's water system, destroyed by war, is sickening its children
www.bbc.com
Palestinian children are ending up severely ill from dehydration and drinking contaminated water.

Eight months of war have reduced nine-year-old Yunis Jumaa to skin and bone.

Stretched out, semi-unconscious on a hospital bed in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, his twisted frame is hard to look at.

His arms and legs like matchsticks, his knee joints bulging, his chest heaves with the skin stretched tight over his rib cage.

“My son was in excellent health before, he was normal,” says his mother Ghanima Jumaa.

“But when he developed this malnutrition and dehydration, he became as you see him now.”

  • MeanEYE@lemmy.worldEnglish
    110·
    5 months ago

    Water pipelines, you know for supplying water. There’s not such thing as taking water out of Gaza, unless it’s sewage. If they had water in Gaza they wouldn’t be in problem, wouldn’t they?

    • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      71·
      5 months ago

      In 1967, Israel seized control of all water resources in the newly occupied territories. To this day, it retains exclusive control over all the water resources that lie between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, with the exception of a short section of the coastal aquifer that runs under the Gaza Strip. Israel uses the water as it sees fit, ignoring the needs of Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip to such an extent that both areas suffer from a severe water shortage. In each of them, residents are not supplied enough water; in Gaza, even the water that is supplied is substandard and unfit for drinking.

      Israel has been holding the Gaza Strip under blockade for more than a decade, since June 2007. It does not allow any materials in that it considers “dual purpose”, i.e., that can be used for either civilian or military purposes. This includes construction materials, such as cement and iron, and other raw materials. All these are needed to repair Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure, which were heavily damaged by Israeli bombings, especially in Operation Cast Lead (which began in late 2008) and Operation Protective Edge (the summer of 2014). The estimated damage amounts to some 34 million dollars. As of the end of 2015, more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza were still cut off from the public water network.

      Will you ever stop with the Genocide and Apartheid apologia?

        • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          5 months ago

          You just currently did it by justifying the Water Control of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and it’s not hard to find more apologia in your history

          https://lemmy.world/comment/10200509

          Deliberately ignoring all the hospitals Israel has bombed before and after the one instance where it was inconclusive

          https://lemmy.world/comment/10204884

          Falsely stating that Israel is trying to minimize civilian deaths while ignoring the over 500 incitements to genocide, the use of power targets, and the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure

          Maybe I’m wrong, do you acknowledge that this is an ongoing genocide or that Israel is an Apartheid State?

          • MeanEYE@lemmy.worldEnglish
            19·
            5 months ago

            Whether it is genocide or not is not up to me to decide. Facts are huge number of civilians are dying. However if you wish to claim Israel is not trying to minimize civilian deaths you should educate yourself more because they definitely do. From calling people and telling them to evacuate, to flyers thrown, to roof knocking and more tactics. There’s not a single army on this planet that does this, especially during the war.

            Now you can go through my post history and point things out, but I’ve never said anything I haven’t fact checked. So feel free to double-check everything poking your eyes. And am not deliberately ignoring anything. War is ugly and disgusting, especially in one where many innocents die. But no matter how you twist your logic to make me appear evil or excuse Hamas or whatever the agenda is, the matter of the fact is… Hamas started it. Every time. Number of times now. You can go on and talk about apartheid and evil this, or two state solution. At no point was there an attempt from Hamas to peacefully resolve issues. It’s always stabbings on the street, bombs under a bus or something else. In fact list goes on for quite a while.

            Oh and the comment you quoted as me “apologizing” for Israel. Here’s the link to that as well. But keep living in that bubble. There’s not a single thing I falsely stated while you on the other hand are on a crusade yourself without investing any effort to back your claims. Just rambling.

            • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldEnglish
              7·
              5 months ago

              Have you seen what roof knocking is like?

              Or that they stopped the roof knocking on Oct 9th 2023?

              Or that the repeated evacuation orders, where somehow millions of people are supposed to evacuate in a mere 24 hours with no cell service, electricity, food, or water, is blatant ethnic cleansing

              Or that Israel has repeatedly bombed evacuation routes, places outside the evacuation zones, and ‘safe’ zones?

              Sorry, I mean ‘safer zones’ since a Safe Zone has an international definition that Israel fails to meet.

              Or the deliberate targeting of civilian areas as Power Targets

              Although it is unprecedented for the Israeli army to attack more than 1,000 power targets in five days, the idea of causing mass devastation to civilian areas for strategic purposes was formulated in previous military operations in Gaza, honed by the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” from the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

              Or the use of Lavender and Where’s Daddy which intentionally bomb whole families and civilians

              After the founding of Israel, the Two-State Solutions were utilized to further annex the Palestinian Occupied Territories and enact military control over Palestinians while denying them human and civil rights. This is apartheid. Despite this, both Fatah and Hamas have accepted a Two-State Solution on the 1967 borders, with the two most important factors being the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees and an end to the permanent occupation. Israel has had no intention on peace, as evidence of the constant land grabbing, dividing the West Bank into hundreds of isolated enclaves.

              The Israeli imposed closure on Gaza began in 1991, temporarily, becoming permanent in 1993. The barrier began around Gaza around 1972. After the ‘disengagement’ in 2007, this turned into a full blockade; where Israel has had control over the airspace, borders, and sea. Under the guise of ‘dual-use’ Israel has restricted food, allocating a minimum supply leading to over half of Gaza being food insecure; construction materials, medical supplies, and other basic necessities have also been restricted. This has been a deliberate tactic of De-development, part of the systemic violence of the Apartheid Regime.

              The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development - Third Edition by Sara M. Roy

              Oslo Accord Sources: MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ

              History of peace process - The Intercept

              Israel has repeatedly refused any permanent ceasefire, here is a list that follows the ceasefire talks week by week

              Hundreds of Genocide Scholars have described this ethnic cleansing campaign as genocide because of the deliberate targeting of children/civilians and expressed intent by Israeli officials.

              So, when we look at the actions taken, the dropping of thousands and thousands of bombs in a couple of days, including phosphorus bombs, as we heard, on one of the most densely populated areas around the world, together with these proclamations of intent, this indeed constitutes genocidal killing, which is the first act, according to the convention, of genocide. And Israel, I must say, is also perpetrating act number two and three — that is, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and creating condition designed to bring about the destruction of the group by cutting off water, food, supply of energy, bombing hospitals, ordering the fast evictions of hospitals, which the World Health Organization has declared to be, quote, “a death sentence.” So, we’re seeing the combination of genocidal acts with special intent. This is indeed a textbook case of genocide.

              “A Textbook Case of Genocide”: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel’s Assault on Gaza

              Law for Palestine Releases Database with 500+ Instances of Israeli Incitement to Genocide – Continuously Updated

              AP News, Time, Reuters, Vox, CBC

              Don’t paint me as a Hamas support either, I’ve been critical of them too. I don’t think they should rule and they should also be tried for their war crimes. But that doesn’t change the reality of the Apartheid. And no free fair election for Palestinians can happen under an Apartheid, that must end first.