“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” The haunting words of the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge feel less like poetry and more like testimony in Gaza today.

Gaza lies along the Mediterranean coast, yet safe water has become painfully scarce.

Years of repeated damage to water and sanitation systems have left wells, pipelines, sewage networks, and desalination plants destroyed or barely functioning.

What once sustained daily life has, in many places, become unreliable or unsafe.

Across neighbourhoods and displacement sites, children walk long distances carrying heavy, empty containers. Parents try to stretch whatever water they can find across drinking, cooking, and washing, often knowing it may not be safe.

The quiet calculation of survival, how much water can be spared today, has become part of everyday life.

Behind this struggle is a system under collapse. Damage to sewage infrastructure and lack of treatment have contributed to contamination of Gaza’s coastal aquifer, the main source of freshwater.

Untreated wastewater, saltwater intrusion, and debris have further reduced water quality. What remains is often unsafe, but there are few alternatives left.

The health consequences are already visible. Humanitarian agencies including our doctors on the ground have reported rising cases of acute watery diarrhoea and hepatitis A, especially among displaced families living in crowded shelters with limited sanitation.

For many children, illness is no longer an exception but a recurring part of life shaped by unsafe water and weakened conditions.

The land itself carries its own quiet loss. Large areas of farmland, olive groves, and vegetation have been damaged or destroyed.

Soil that once absorbed rain and supported crops is now degraded and compacted, reducing both food production and the natural renewal of groundwater. The result is a deepening cycle of scarcity: less water, less food, less recovery.