Heat And Thirst Drive Families In Gaza To Drink Water That Makes Them Sick
HuffPost
Each drop is rationed for drinking, cooking, cleaning or washing. Some reuse what they can and save a couple of cloudy inches in their jerrycans for whatever tomorrow brings — or doesn’t.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — After waking early to stand in line for an hour under the August heat, Rana Odeh returns to her tent with her jug of murky water. She wipes the sweat from her brow and strategizes how much to portion out to her two small children. From its color alone, she knows full well it’s likely contaminated.
Thirst supersedes the fear of illness.
She fills small bottles for her son and daughter and pours a sip into a teacup for herself. What’s left she adds to a jerrycan for later.
“We are forced to give it to our children because we have no alternative,” Odeh, who was driven from her home in Khan Younis, said of the water. “It causes diseases for us and our children.”
Such scenes have become the grim routine in Muwasi, a sprawling displacement camp in central Gaza where hundreds of thousands endure scorching summer heat. Sweat-soaked and dust-covered, parents and children chase down water trucks that come every two or three days, filling bottles, canisters and buckets and then hauling them home, sometimes on donkey-drawn carts.
