Introduction

The Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) continue their notorious policy of violating civilians’ rights and depriving them of basic needs such as healthcare, food, and water. They use starvation, dehydration, and medicines as a bargaining chip to forcibly displace the Palestinians from large areas of the Gaza Strip by deliberately making it uninhabitable and their survival nearly impossible as the destruction of vital infrastructure fosters an environment that facilitates the swift transmission of diseases and epidemics.
IOF deliberately target and destroy Gaza’s healthcare system, rendering it impossible to treat diseases and thereby leaving those who survive face death from diseases and epidemics. This evidences Israel’s persistence to commit the crime of genocide against the Gaza Strip’s population, yet the international community fails to pressure the occupying power to comply with and implement the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings and UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate ceasefire. The international community also fails to take urgent and effective action to provide essential services and humanitarian aid to address the dire living conditions of Gaza Strip population.
Displaced people in Gaza live in devastating conditions amid limited access to safe water, sanitation facilities, and hygiene requirements, jeopardizing their health, education, and livelihoods. For 10 months, IOF have been deliberately targeting water sources to dehydrate civilians and thereby force them to evacuate their residential neighborhoods for military purposes.
This Factsheet outlines the water and sanitation crisis in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing Israeli genocidal campaign since 07 October 2023, and highlights the unprecedented damage inflicted that has created a major humanitarian disaster with long-term repercussions on the already strained healthcare and environmental systems resulting from a 17-year siege before the current aggression. The Factsheet frames these deliberate Israeli violations against water and sanitation system within the broader framework of IOF’s persistence to commit genocide against the people of the Gaza Strip. IOF has used a policy of dehydration against them and deprived them of their right to have access to clean and safe water, in a flagrant violation of all international conventions and instruments.