Four Palestinian and regional human rights organizations submitted a joint urgent appeal to the United Nations (UN) Special Procedures on the escalating water and sanitation crisis in the Gaza Strip, occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). Notably, this appeal highlights the sharp deterioration of the water and sanitation conditions in Gaza resulting from the increased punitive measures imposed by Israel against the civilian population in August 2020. Insufficient access to clean and safe drinking water and sanitation facilities in the oPt has been a hallmark of Palestinian life for decades, with resources overexploited and water quality steadily deteriorating in parallel and as a result of Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid regime. Israel, the Occupying Power, has prohibited Palestinians in the whole oPt from drawing any of its water since 1967 and currently controls more than 85 percent of the oPt’s water sources.

The strip's rehabilitation already demanded ‘herculean efforts.’ With the spread of COVID-19, action is imperative.

Gaza, in particular, faces environmental perils not only from changing atmospheric conditions but also from ocean acidification and ocean deoxygenation both of which threaten ocean ecology and therefore endanger a major food source for Gazans. In addition sea level is projected to rise by as much as several meters by leading climate scientist James Hansen and fellow researchers, possibly as soon as 50 years from now. These climactic changes will have devastating effects on Israel and many other countries as well, but since Gaza is essentially an open air prison whose inhabitants are confined to the coast, a single major storm could all but end life there.

Some two million Gazans suffer from a constant shortage of water, which gets worse in summer. The tap water is salty and polluted and is not fit for drinking. In the absence of other alternatives, residents are forced to use this water for bathing and washing, yet the supply is irregular and unpredictable. For drinking and cooking, they no choice to buy water privately – despite severe financial hardship – and even then it is usually substandard.

La hausse des suicides au premier semestre 2020 illustre le terrible impact psychologique du siège israélien sur les habitants de Gaza. - Vingt-trois ans après sa libération d’une prison israélienne, Jamal Wadi se débattait toujours avec les conséquences de sa terrible expérience. Souffrant de graves traumatismes psychologiques et de problèmes de santé mentale, le Palestinien s’est suicidé le 21 juin dernier à l’âge de 54 ans. La bande de Gaza connaît une flambée des taux de suicide alors qu’elle est entrée dans sa 14e année sous blocus. Selon le Centre al-Mezan pour les droits de l’homme, basé à Gaza, au moins seize personnes se sont suicidées et des centaines d’autres ont tenté de le faire à Gaza au premier semestre 2020.

The Report presents overwhelming evidence of the prolonged and unlawful victimization of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, which has intensified greatly since Israel imposed a land, sea, and air blockade in 2007. This unlawful and comprehensive block-ade has entrapped the Gazan people ever since it was established is a particularly severe and cruel form of collective punishment, which is a flagrant and continuing criminal wrong. Introduction by Richard Falk.

As Othman Hiles began climbing the Gaza fence, an Israeli soldier opened fire and killed the unarmed boy. The soldier’s sentence? Community service.

"The bomber pilot didn’t know. His commanders who gave him the orders also didn’t know. The defense minister and the commander in chief didn’t know. Nor did the commander of the air force. The intelligence officers who aimed at the target didn’t know. The army spokesman who lied without a qualm also didn’t know. None of our heroes knew. The ones who always know everything suddenly didn’t know. The ones who can track down the son of a wanted man in a Damascus suburb didn’t know that sleeping inside their miserable hovel in Dir al-Balah was an impoverished family. They, who serve in the most moral army and the most advanced intelligence services in the world, didn’t know that the flimsy tin shack had long since stopped being part of the “Islamic Jihad infrastructure,” and it’s doubtful that it ever was. They didn’t know and they didn’t bother to check — after all, what’s the worst that could happen? Reporter Yaniv Kubovich revealed the shocking truth on Friday on the Haaretz website : The target had not been re-examined for at least one year prior to the strike, the individual who was supposedly its target never existed and the intelligence was based on rumors. The bomb was dropped anyway. The result: eight bodies in colorful shrouds, some of them horrifically tiny, all in a row; members of a single extended family, the Asoarkas, five of them children — including two infants."

The Ministry of Social Development in the Gaza Strip said in a report that the 2019 poverty rate in the enclave is the highest in the world. On the occasion of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, celebrated on Oct. 17, the Ministry’s undersecretary, Ghazi Hamad, said that poverty and unemployment rates have reached nearly 75 percent in 2019.

The only way Israelis can be made to sit up and take note of the disaster unfolding next door in Gaza, it seems, is when they fear the fallout may spill out of the tiny coastal enclave and engulf them too. Environmental experts from two Israeli universities issued a report in June warning that the imminent collapse of Gaza’s water, sewage and electricity infrastructure would soon rebound on Israel.

Last week, Israel announced that it was ready to open its ports for the Gaza residents who want to emigrate. This suggests strongly that the government in Tel Aviv has been inflicting suffering on the Gaza Strip intentionally in an effort to push its residents to leave.

Briefing: "No Justification for Israel to Shoot Protesters with Live Ammunition": "The Commission has reasonable grounds to believe that during the Great March of Return, Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity, and must be immediately investigated by Israel," said the Chair of the Commission, Santiago Canton of Argentina.

Palestinians have paid a great price for their call for life with dignity during mass protests held along Gaza's boundary with Israel over the past eight months. Some 180 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli occupation forces and nearly 6,000 others injured by live fire during the Great March of Return. "The vast majority of casualties were unarmed, and were fatally shot from a distance while in the Gaza Strip itself," according to a new report by the Israeli group B'Tselem.

As we, Palestinians of Gaza, embark on our long walk to freedom, we have come to the conclusion that we can no longer rely on governments; instead, we request that the citizens of the world oppose these ongoing deadly crimes.

Friday marked what Gaza's health ministry described as the single bloodiest day of the Great March of Return protests since 14 May, when Israeli occupation forces fatally injured more than 60 Palestinians. Seven Palestinians, including two children [one 11 and the other 14 years old], were slain on Friday, two days shy of the six-month anniversary of the protest launch.

Les visées israéliennes dans la bande de Gaza semblent se réaliser. Elles sont illustrées quotidiennement.

The practice of willful killing of civilian protesters at the Gaza fence is part and parcel of an ongoing Israeli policy targeting the civilian Palestinians of the Gaza strip and systematically denying them their rights to movement, work, medical care, study, livelihood and increasingly life itself.