Public Health and the Water Crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Structural violence in the era of a new pandemic: the case of the Gaza Strip

“…2,3 The colonial fragmentation of the Palestinian people and their health systems, combined with a neoliberal development framework implemented during the past decades, has created a profound dependency on aid, placing health care at the mercy of increasingly restrictive international donor politics. 4,5 Since 2007, Israel has imposed a crippling land, air, and sea blockade over the Gaza Strip's 2 million Palestinians, 1•4 million of whom are refugees, 6 subjecting them to extreme crowding in one of the world's most densely populated regions. 7 As a result, the Gaza Strip faces high levels of poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, and lacks sufficient clean water 5,8 while the blockade disrupts medical supply chains, curtails the movement of patients and health workers, and severely inhibits medical capacity-building and public health development.…”

“…4,5 Since 2007, Israel has imposed a crippling land, air, and sea blockade over the Gaza Strip's 2 million Palestinians, 1•4 million of whom are refugees, 6 subjecting them to extreme crowding in one of the world's most densely populated regions. 7 As a result, the Gaza Strip faces high levels of poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, and lacks sufficient clean water 5,8 while the blockade disrupts medical supply chains, curtails the movement of patients and health workers, and severely inhibits medical capacity-building and public health development. 9 Preventive measures and containment of COVID-19 will be extremely difficult now that the pandemic has reached the Gaza Strip.…”

Drinking water resources as a source of the Israeli-Arab conflicts

“…Пошто из ових издани Палестинци са Западне обале обезбеђују више од 90% своје воде, у порасту је број оболелих од цревних обољења (преосталих 10% или 15 милиона m 3 добијају из површинских вода или купују од Израела) (Central Bureau of Statistics Israeli, 1991). Већина студија је открила да је преко 61% палестинске деце заражено цревним паразитима, а у периоду 2002-2003. година дошло је до пораста оболелих код деце млађе од 5 година за 17,1% (Bellisari, 1994). Оваква ситуација изазива велики револт Палестинаца, који апелују на светску јавност и OUN да онемогући Израелу да повлачи превише воде из издани.…”

Water politics within the Palestinian nation-state building

“…At a national level, the struggle for water -regarding both quantity and quality (Bellissari, 1994) -is locally perceived as the fight for independence by the entire Palestinian population oppressed by the colonialism of the State of Israel, the « Other », above all, which appropriated the largest part of water and other resources, such as the land (Dillman, 1989).…”