Israel’s destruction of wells and sewage networks in Gaza, combined with restrictions on the entry of water-treatment supplies, has turned water into one of the main channels through which disease is spreading among displaced Palestinians. Whatever source families resort to, the water is increasingly unsafe, particularly for children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems.
Dr Mohammed Abu Afash, director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, PMRS, one of Palestine’s largest non-governmental health organisations, says he is increasingly alarmed by the consequences of worsening water contamination in Gaza.
With few alternatives available, residents are forced to drink contaminated water and use it for essential daily needs while the healthcare system faces severe shortages of medicines, medical supplies and laboratory testing materials.
According to Abu Afash, shortages have exceeded 75 per cent of the supplies required to diagnose and treat illnesses associated with water contamination. Health facilities are receiving hundreds of patients from different age groups every day, while lacking the capacity to provide adequate treatment.
He warns that diseases linked to polluted water could become more widespread and more complicated in the coming period.
Epidemiological data held by Gaza’s Ministry of Health reinforce those concerns. Dr Munir al-Bursh, director-general of the ministry, says 28 per cent of recorded diseases in the Gaza Strip are transmitted through contaminated water.
The experience of the children of Abdullah al-Shaer, who lives in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, reflects the wider crisis. His four children contracted intestinal and viral illnesses three times between the beginning of the year and early August.
Their symptoms included diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, skin rashes, fever, yellowing of the eyes and skin, and the appearance of spots and blisters across their bodies.
They were diagnosed with intestinal parasites, including Giardia, as well as amoebic dysentery, an intestinal infection caused by the parasite Entamoeba histolytica. The parasite can enter the digestive system through contaminated drinking water or through water used to wash food and utensils.
Two of the children also contracted hepatitis A, while another was infected with chickenpox, according to their father.
Microbiological Contamination Rises Above 25 Per Cent
Microbiological contamination in Gaza’s groundwater wells, now the only water source available to the population, has increased from 4 per cent before the war to more than 25 per cent today, according to limited preliminary testing recently conducted by the Ministry of Health.
Saeed al-Aklouk, the ministry official responsible for water and sanitation monitoring, says even that figure may understate the true extent of contamination because tests were carried out using basic equipment and without the full laboratory capacity required for accurate assessment.
Continuous testing by the World Health Organisation points to an increasingly serious situation.
Samples were taken from groundwater wells, water tankers and healthcare facilities. Of 6,700 samples tested between January and August 2026, the proportion showing microbiological contamination rose from 6 per cent in January to more than 18 per cent in August.
The figures were presented by Dr Rik Peeperkorn’s successor, WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territories Reinheld Van de Weerdt, during a United Nations briefing in Geneva on 1 September 2026.
The changing contamination rates make the current scale of the crisis even more difficult to assess precisely.
Deliberate Contamination
Abu Afash says the occupation has contributed to the contamination of Gaza’s water sources through several parallel paths, including the destruction of wells, attacks on sewage infrastructure and forcing displaced populations to concentrate over the Strip’s main groundwater reserves.
Al-Aklouk identifies two principal drivers of the contamination.
The first is the collapse of Gaza’s sewage system, including treatment plants and pumping stations. This has caused accumulated sewage to mix with cleaner water sources.
One of the most prominent examples is the Sheikh Radwan reservoir west of Gaza City. Originally designed to collect rainwater, the reservoir became a collection point for sewage during the war. Water levels have risen to a point where surrounding residential areas are now threatened.
Large quantities of sewage are also leaking from beneath destroyed buildings after transmission lines were damaged, allowing wastewater to spread irregularly through residential districts and streets.
The second major cause, according to al-Aklouk, is the injection of large amounts of sewage and wastewater underground through more than 300,000 absorption pits dug by displaced people living in tents who have no other means of disposing of sewage.
In at least three areas of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, sewage has been observed emerging from underground and flooding tents and streets, illustrating the scale and spread of contamination as displaced residents appeal for urgent intervention to contain what they describe as an epidemic.
Abu Afash adds that Israeli restrictions on the entry of sufficient quantities of water disinfectants and purification materials have worsened the crisis.
Before the war, Gaza relied on three main technologies to disinfect water.
The first was chlorine, scientifically known as sodium hypochlorite, NaClO.
The second involved pumping ozone, O3, into water. Ozone is a powerful oxidising agent that rapidly destroys bacteria, viruses, parasites and harmful organic compounds without leaving harmful chemical residues.
The third method relied on ultraviolet disinfection, using UV light at specific wavelengths, approximately 254 nanometres, to damage the genetic material of bacteria, viruses and parasites and prevent them from reproducing.
The ozone and ultraviolet systems have disappeared entirely from Gaza, with Israel preventing their entry since the war began.
Only chlorine remains available, and the amount entering Gaza has fallen by 70 per cent, according to al-Aklouk.
Diseases Spreading Through Polluted Water
A range of disease-causing organisms are reaching Gaza residents either through drinking contaminated water or coming into contact with it.
Medical sources identify two main groups.
The first consists of intestinal parasites, including Giardia and Entamoeba histolytica, which causes amoebic dysentery. These infections attack the digestive system and can cause diarrhoea, abdominal cramps and intestinal inflammation, with particularly severe consequences for children and people with weakened immune systems.
The second group consists of viruses that can also spread through polluted water or physical contact with it.
These include hepatitis A and poliovirus, which has been detected in Gaza’s water. Gaza has also witnessed a widespread outbreak of chickenpox in recent months.
Large vaccination campaigns targeting these viruses have been conducted over the past two years, according to medical sources.
Zaher al-Wahidi, head of the Information Department at the Ministry of Health, says 65,561 cases of chickenpox were recorded from the beginning of this year until the first third of August.
The impact can be seen in the experience of brothers Ahmed and Ibrahim Nasr, whose bodies and faces became covered with blisters.
Their father, Abdullah, took them to a primary healthcare clinic operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA.
He says all of his children contracted chickenpox, with two suffering particularly severe symptoms that forced him to visit clinics three times in a single week.
On each visit, he received only part of the required treatment. Doctors prescribed the remaining medicines and told him to search for them at the small number of pharmacies still operating in Gaza.
The children live in an overcrowded camp where contaminated sewage flows between tents and solid waste accumulates nearby.
Residents rely on water delivered to the camp by tanker trucks for drinking.
Hospitals and clinics across the Strip are consequently receiving thousands of patients each day suffering from diseases and viruses linked to drinking water, including intestinal illnesses, skin diseases and hepatitis A.
According to Ministry of Health figures, the number of hepatitis A infections recorded since the beginning of the war has exceeded 70,000.
Abu Afash warns that hepatitis A is a viral disease present in the blood and faeces of an infected person, allowing it to spread through multiple routes, particularly in Gaza’s displacement camps, where war conditions have created an environment highly conducive to transmission.
Gaza Forced to Depend on Agricultural Wells
Before the war, the Ministry of Health monitored 320 wells used to supply water to Gaza’s population.
Disinfectants were added according to scientific and safety standards based on the condition of distribution networks, including their length, age, leakage levels and water pressure.
Today, only 110 of those wells remain. Some were destroyed, while others are located in areas under Israeli control.
Residents are therefore relying increasingly on agricultural wells and improvised water sources that are neither monitored nor disinfected.
Al-Aklouk describes these sources as “the greatest danger to life”.
A substantial proportion of the water reaching overcrowded displacement camps is transported in tankers operated by private water companies contracted by international organisations. Other supplies come from agricultural wells.
Abu Afash says the safety of much of this water cannot be guaranteed, with the consequences visible every day in the number of patients arriving at hospitals and primary care clinics.
At the outpatient reception area of Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza, hundreds of displaced Palestinians gather seeking treatment. Many suffer from intestinal and viral illnesses that doctors associate with drinking contaminated water.
Among them is 40-year-old Gaza resident Mona Awad, whose five-year-old son suffers episodes of diarrhoea and abdominal pain roughly once every month.
Each time, she takes him to health clinics. He improves temporarily, only for the symptoms to return because the family has no alternative to contaminated water.
Awad searched local markets for water disinfectants and purification products but found none.
She eventually resorted to boiling water and allowing it to cool before drinking, despite severe shortages of cooking gas and the high price of wood and firewood.
Al-Aklouk traces much of the crisis back to mass displacement, which pushed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into western Gaza, particularly the Mawasi area of Khan Younis, directly above the Strip’s main groundwater reserves.
The area has no sewage network.
With displaced families forced to dig absorption pits and dispose of solid waste around the places where they live, pollutants have seeped into underground water reserves, turning the water itself into a pathway for disease transmission.
Somaya Omar describes a similar experience.
Her son and family depend on unsafe drinking-water sources, including agricultural wells and tanker supplies.
He recently contracted hepatitis A and is now suffering from bloody diarrhoea after being diagnosed with an intestinal amoeba parasite.
According to Omar, a doctor warned the family that continued exposure to polluted water could cause repeated infection or prolong his symptoms.
The family, however, has no idea how to secure a safe alternative water source.
Dr Ahmed al-Farra, director of Al-Tahrir Hospital at Nasser Medical Complex, says infections involving amoeba and Giardia parasites have risen noticeably during the war.
He attributes the increase partly to families using seawater contaminated with sewage and solid waste to wash clothes, dishes and bedding during displacement.
Al-Aklouk agrees, saying contamination levels in Gaza’s seawater have reached 80 per cent.
The Ministry of Health has also confirmed the presence of both amoeba and Giardia parasites in drinking water.
For displaced Palestinians, the result is an increasingly closed cycle: damaged water infrastructure, collapsed sanitation, unsafe wells, contaminated seawater, disappearing purification systems and a health sector without sufficient medicines or testing materials to treat the diseases spreading through them.
