Gaza’s water system is crumbling under war and continued military activity, with widespread damage to sewage networks, pumping stations and power-dependent systems, according to estimates released this month by the European Union, the World Bank and the U.N. The overall picture remained dire, even as some Israeli-backed projects offered limited hope. For 2.1 million people, the collapse of basic infrastructure is not an abstract policy debate; it is the daily machinery of deprivation.
Who Controls the Tap
Doctors Without Borders accused Israel of "systemically depriving" people in Gaza of water in what it called a "campaign of collective punishment" against Palestinians. The group said in a report Tuesday that Israel has destroyed or damaged about 90% of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure, including desalination plants, boreholes, pipelines and sewage systems. It said it had also documented the Israeli military shooting at clearly identified water trucks and destroying boreholes that were a lifeline for tens of thousands of people.
Claire San Filippo, MSF emergency manager, said, "Israeli authorities know that without water life ends, yet they have deliberately and systematically obliterated water infrastructure in Gaza – while consistently blocking water-related supplies from entering." That quote lands with the force of a report from the ground, not a press release from the top. It describes a system in which access to water is controlled, interrupted and reduced to a weaponized shortage.
COGAT, Israel’s military body that coordinates aid to Gaza, rejected the accusations and said the water supply in the Gaza Strip "consistently exceeds humanitarian thresholds." The contradiction between the military apparatus and the aid groups documenting destruction sits at the center of the crisis: one side claims adequacy, while the infrastructure itself keeps collapsing.
What the Damage Looks Like
The report from Doctors Without Borders said the practices have far-reaching consequences for the health, hygiene and dignity of Gaza’s 2.1 million people. The damage is not limited to pipes and pumps. It reaches into every part of life that depends on clean water, sanitation and functioning public systems. The destruction of desalination plants, boreholes, pipelines and sewage systems means the ordinary routines of survival are now bound up with military decisions made elsewhere.
The estimates released this month by the European Union, the World Bank and the U.N. described widespread damage to sewage networks, pumping stations and power-dependent systems. The reporting said the overall picture remained dire, even as some Israeli-backed projects offered limited hope. That limited hope sits inside a larger structure of dependency, where the same forces that oversee the damage also shape what counts as relief.
Healthcare Rebuilt at a Price
Rebuilding Gaza’s healthcare system will require an estimated $10 billion over the next five years, according to a report published over the weekend by the World Health Organization. The report said more than 1,800 healthcare facilities have been destroyed or damaged across the Strip, about 70% of medical equipment has been depleted and at least half of essential medicines are unavailable.
The scale of destruction and the financial and logistical challenge of recovery remain immense. The numbers show a health system stripped down by war and continued military activity, then left with a reconstruction bill so large it reads like another barrier placed in front of ordinary people trying to survive. The WHO estimate does not describe a simple repair job. It describes a long, expensive rebuild after the infrastructure of care has been smashed.
The reporting on Gaza’s water and healthcare systems points to the same hierarchy in different forms: military power at the top, aid bodies issuing estimates and denials, and millions of people living with the consequences at the bottom. The language of humanitarian thresholds and limited hope does little to change the fact that water, medicine and basic care are being measured, rationed and contested under conditions of war.