Covid-19 in the ‘unlivable’ Gaza Strip
In a 2012 report the United Nations predicted that the Gaza Strip would be “unlivable” by 2020.
Thanks in large part to a blockade Israel imposed on the tiny Palestinian territory in 2007, Gaza’s electricity supply was sporadic, its water polluted, and its sanitation and health care systems were nearing collapse, along with its economy.
The UN revised its prediction in 2017, stating that conditions in Gaza had deteriorated “even faster than the UN had originally projected.”
By that time, 97% of its water was undrinkable, and its sole aquifer was on the verge of being irreversibly damaged. Israel’s blockade had prevented the entry of materials necessary to repair the damage to its essential infrastructure caused by three major military offensives since the closure had been declared.
When I last entered Gaza in 2016, 18 months after Israel’s 51-day bombardment known as ‘Operation Protective Edge,’ I was overwhelmed by the strong smell of sewage. With waste treatment facilities either destroyed or unable to run on a day’s quota of 2–4 hours of electricity, over 20 million gallons of raw sewage were being dumped in the sea every day.
Well, here we are in 2020, and the situation in Gaza — home to more than 2 million Palestinians, half of them children and the majority refugees living in densely-packed camps — is not just ‘unlivable,’ but positively lethal.
The spread of the Corona virus
Over a five month period, the Corona virus had been confined to 72 cases detected in travellers entering the Strip through crossing with Egypt, who were immediately quarantined at the border.
Then, on August 24, 4 cases were found in the Al Maghazi refugee camp. Despite an immediately imposed lockdown, by September 23 as many as 3,000 cases had been identified, and 17 people had died of the disease. Given the dearth of testing equipment, the actual number of cases is likely to be much higher.
In the big pandemic picture, 3,000 cases may seem a fairly insignificant number. But imagine trying to fight the virus under conditions prevailing in the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely-crowded places on earth.
In August, as ‘community spread’ was gathering momentum, Gazans endured three weeks of nightly missile strikes, with Israel claiming its F-16 fighter jets were responding to incendiary balloons. The balloons were reportedly being launched from Gaza as ‘distress signals’ in the effort to draw attention to the life-threatening circumstances imposed by Israel’s 13-year-long blockade.
In mid August, Israel closed the Mediterranean to Gaza’s fisherman and slammed shut the main border crossing for fuel, food, and goods. Gaza’s sole power plant was forced to close down on August 18, and electricity dropped below 4 hours a day. A badly deteriorated health sector could scarcely function without electricity or fuel for generators.
A Qatar-brokered deal between Israel and the ruling group Hamas implemented on September 1 lifted the ban on fishing and permitted fuel and goods to enter. Electricity soon reached its pre August level of an erratic 8 hours a day in most parts of the Strip, and generators could again function.
But the health sector, with its dire shortage of facilities, medicines, and medical and protective equipment, remains woefully unprepared for the pandemic. There are fewer than 100 ventilators for a population of 2 million, many of which are already being used by patients with other respiratory maladies.
A water calamity
On September 3 the Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights issued a sobering report, “Water Shortage in the Gaza Strip Amid Covid-19 Outbreak.”
The report states:
“The low quality of tap water, rendered unfit for human consumption, forces Gaza residents to purchase desalinated drinking water from private vendors who desalinate the water and truck it to households, but with the Israeli ban on fuel destabilizing power supply to households, and the mandatory lockdown, residents are struggling to obtain drinking water and pump it to their house roof tanks. Families who contract the coronavirus are strictly ordered to self-isolate at home, with police officers preventing them from leaving, which exacerbates their struggle to obtain drinking water.”
It is not just clean drinking water that is beyond the reach of residents. They are also struggling to obtain non potable water, as Ismail al-Tatari from northern Gaza describes in the report:
“I live with a family of ten, five of whom are children, in a three-storey house. It’s almost impossible to fill the roof tanks with water as the 3-hour municipal water supply coincides with power cuts most of the time, which means we can’t operate the water pump. Lack of water has immediately subsided the family’s ability to shower and keep the house clean. We are particularly worried because we are aware that a proper hygiene, especially for our children, is a priority to fight the spread of the pandemic, but without water, it is a huge challenge to shower, keep the toilets clean, and do laundry. We have been buying and storing drinking water to use for cleaning, instead of tap water. This is tremendously expensive, and I can’t afford it if the situation lasts longer.”
Collective punishment kills
For nearly 14 years, the residents of Gaza have been cut off from the world by an Israeli blockade that has destroyed their economy and livelihoods, ruined their infrastructure, deprived their young people of a future, and now prevents seriously ill patients from leaving the Gaza Strip with its collapsing medical facilities to seek treatment elsewhere. The Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has termed Israel’s policy toward Gaza one of “incremental genocide.”
And we collude in the process. Israel bombs Gaza with US weapons and cages its population with the assistance of our tax dollars. The US has meanwhile cut its funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which had provided Gaza’s large refugee population with schooling, health facilities and emergency food supplies.
Americans should pay attention to the ‘distress signals’ sent by those incendiary balloons, since what happens there is very much our business.
Nancy Murray, September 23, 2020
