It has been two months since Israel brazenly announced its intention to violate International Humanitarian Law by cutting off all food, water, and electricity to Palestinians in the already besieged Gaza. Simultaneously subjecting them to constant and indiscriminate bombings and ground attacks. From the second week of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, my cousins in Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the central Gaza Strip were concerned about water:
“There is effectively no electricity or water in the Gaza Strip,” wrote Mohammed, a mathematics professor and young father of one, on October 17th. “We’re lucky to live next to an agricultural area so we can at least access [untreated] well water, but 90% of the population don’t even have this option. Displaced people sheltering in UNRWA schools come to us sometimes asking for just one liter of agricultural water – they are desperate. Many people are drinking unsafe water.”
Weeks later, the effects of being forced to drink unclean water began to show:
“All of my children have suffered from diarrhea for days,” Wesam, a physician and mother of three children under the age of six, told me on November 11th.
Mohammed wrote on December 3rd that his two-year-old son is sick with gastrointestinal issues. He cannot find basic medications, like paracetamol, to relieve his symptoms. “All the pharmacies have run out because so many children are infected. According to our doctors, contaminated water is the main cause of illness now.”
“Non-potable water only comes one day a week, and it doesn’t reach many homes,” he writes. “Many people use sea water [for washing], which is already very polluted. Without fuel for the pumps, sewage has begun to mix with water in the aquifers, posing an even greater danger.”
After more than two months of heightened siege and Israeli bombardment, which has also damaged vital water and sanitation infrastructure, most governments refuse to even condemn Israel’s actions, let alone take meaningful action themselves to end the attacks and siege on Gaza, and alleviate the staggering humanitarian crisis they have caused.
Palestinians have not been surprised by the lack of action from the international community. On the contrary, they have always understood that institutions promoting human rights and international humanitarian law serve the interests of a world that Palestine, along with every other colonized, oppressed, and exploited nation, is not considered an equal part of.
This is a reality many researchers, activists, and human rights advocates have come to grips with in the past two months, as we watch these institutions so staggeringly and completely fail in their mandates to protect life and ensure justice. Now, as Palestinians in Gaza struggle to find drinkable water and children fall ill with no access to basic and vital medications, our collective understanding of the institutions we have studied, defended, and promoted is being reshaped. By declining to take significant action to halt the crimes being committed against Palestinians, governments render international law illegitimate, humanitarian principles ineffective, and themselves unworthy of respect for failing to uphold the principles they proclaim to stand for.
I write this in memory of Abeer, her husband Hani, and their three-year-old son Hassan, who were killed in their home by an Israeli airstrike on October 19th. They are survived by their three children, Ahmed (11), Ali (9), and Mariam (6), who were also injured in the airstrike.