Gaza’s water crisis is a near-total collapse of water infrastructure affecting over two million people. As of June 2026, only 40% of Gaza’s drinking water production facilities remain functional, and 93% of households face water insecurity. Palestinians in Gaza are forced to survive on just 1.5 to 3 litres of water per day, a figure that represents only 20% of the minimum emergency threshold set by the WHO and UN standards of 15 litres per person per day. The crisis results from the destruction of desalination plants, pipelines, wells, and fuel blockades preventing water systems from operating.
Numbers alone rarely convey the weight of a humanitarian disaster. But these numbers need to be stated clearly before anything else.
Gaza’s water crisis has reached critical levels, with only 40% of drinking water facilities functional and fuel shortages pushing water systems to near collapse. By mid-June 2026, 93% of households faced water insecurity.
91% of households are experiencing water insecurity, and many people are surviving on less than six litres of water per person per day.
According to WHO and UN standards, the minimum emergency water requirement per person per day to survive a humanitarian crisis is 15 litres. A Palestinian in Gaza today is forced to meet all total vital needs, including drinking, washing, cooking, and hygiene, with just 1.5 to 3 litres of water. This amount corresponds to a mere 20% of the mortality threshold.
Read that again. The minimum to survive a humanitarian crisis is 15 litres. People in Gaza are receiving between 1.5 and 3 litres. They are not receiving the humanitarian minimum. They are receiving a fraction of a fraction of what the human body needs to function.
The latest WASH Cluster monitoring, conducted in June, indicates a continued deterioration in water security, with 84% of assessed households experiencing moderate-to-high water insecurity.
This is not a developing crisis. It is a crisis that has already arrived, that is deepening by the week, and that is killing people right now.
To understand how this happened, you need to understand what Gaza’s water system looked like before and what it looks like now.
Nearly 90% of water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed or damaged, significantly limiting access to safe water for the population and increasing risks of disease amid overcrowded and deteriorating living conditions.
The Palestinian Water Authority has confirmed that attacks have “destroyed water infrastructure in the Gaza Strip”, including “around 65% of water wells” in some areas, leading to a sharp decline in the sector’s ability to produce and distribute water.
Data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and the Environmental Quality Authority indicate that more than 90% of water and sewage infrastructure has sustained severe damage during the war, including damage to sewage networks extending about 1,545 kilometres and destruction or disruption of 47 pumping stations.
Destroying infrastructure is one layer of the crisis. The second layer is fuel.
Water in Gaza does not flow by gravity alone. Desalination plants need electricity. Water wells need pumps. Pumps need fuel. Trucking operations that bring water to displaced families need diesel. When fuel stops entering Gaza, water stops moving.
The WASH crisis in Gaza is driven by severe and ongoing fuel shortages, persistent disruptions and damages to pipelines, and significant water losses estimated at 50 to 60% depending on location through networks that are dilapidated or damaged by bombing. Ongoing fuel shortages have forced several water wells to cease operations and desalination plants to operate at minimal capacity.
UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder stated at a press briefing: “If the current more than 100-day blockade on fuel coming into Gaza does not end, children will begin to die of thirst, hospital generators will stop, and incubators will go dark.” He described it as “a man-made drought.”
Even when water reaches families, it is often unsafe to drink.
According to estimates by UNICEF, more than 90% of Gaza’s water is undrinkable due to high salinity and contamination from sewage leakage, alongside the long-term depletion of the coastal aquifer.
Because 70% of the population in Gaza is currently forced to drink salty, contaminated water polluted with sewage waste, the risks of dehydration, severe diarrhoea, cholera, and hepatitis are escalating to epidemic proportions.
Families know the water is unsafe. They drink it anyway. Because there is nothing else.
Statistics describe scale. But the real weight of the Gaza water crisis is felt in the daily lives of ordinary people.
Nawaf al-Akhras begins his day by carrying bottles and jerrycans with his eldest son to a water filling station about one and a half kilometres from his tent in southern Gaza’s al-Mawasi camp. Upon arrival, they are met with thousands of people crowding the station, waiting under the scorching sun for their turn. Nawaf, a father of seven displaced from Rafah, describes the daily round trip, which can stretch for five hours or more, as a torment for his family.
Over 70% of Gaza’s population relies on trucked water, but restrictions and funding shortfalls are putting this supply at risk. Four humanitarian agencies are now phasing out their trucking operations, leaving over 330,000 people across approximately 250 sites at risk of losing their primary drinking source.
Donkey carts, which can barely carry 500 litres of water each, are replacing trucks that can carry 15,000 litres.
That image tells you everything. The most sophisticated aid system in the world, replaced by donkey carts carrying 500 litres, for a population of over two million people.
Umm Luay, 37, says: “In summer, we need twice as much water, but we barely have enough to drink. We are forced to buy water at high prices.”
The water crisis does not affect everyone equally. The most vulnerable carry the heaviest burden.
Children are the most vulnerable to the water crisis. The lack of clean water affects their growth and overall health, increasing the risk of disease, especially in densely populated areas. The World Health Organization warns that water contamination, combined with rising temperatures, contributes to the spread of waterborne diseases, particularly acute diarrhoea and dehydration among children. Doctors in Gaza report a noticeable increase in gastrointestinal infections during the summer, largely due to reliance on unsafe or insufficiently treated water sources.
Women and children pay the heaviest price in the water crisis. The burden of water collection falls disproportionately on women and girls. Hours spent walking to water stations are hours not spent in education, in recovery, in safety. The physical danger of water collection, through damaged and conflict-affected areas, falls on the same shoulders that carry the burden of family survival.
The displaced Saada Abu Amr, 64, told a reporter that she and her family are “living two wars in Gaza, one that kills through bombardments, and the other that kills through waste.” For elderly residents with limited mobility, the daily water journey is not only exhausting. It is, at times, impossible.
Clean water and public health are inseparable. When water collapses, disease follows immediately.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics data confirms that more than 90% of water and sewage infrastructure has sustained severe damage, including destruction or disruption of 47 pumping stations. The result is sewage flowing into the same water sources that families drink from.
Waterborne diseases spreading across Gaza include acute watery diarrhoea, acute bloody diarrhoea, hepatitis A, cholera risk, skin diseases including scabies, and respiratory infections linked to poor hygiene conditions.
UN News reports that rats invade Gaza’s displaced people’s tents, injuring children, consuming aid, and spreading diseases as deteriorating health and environmental conditions worsen amid the accumulation of waste and the collapse of sewage services.
“The water and environmental disaster in the Gaza Strip has peaked after 1,000 days of ongoing war, as planned thirst and water contamination have become a deadly reality that traps the lives of millions of displaced people and triggers epidemics in their tents under the summer heat.”
Despite the scale of the crisis, humanitarian organisations continue to work under extraordinary pressure.
In 2025, UNRWA distributed 970 million litres of drinking and domestic use water and collected and disposed of 70,000 tonnes of solid waste. UNRWA estimates that around 1.7 million people benefitted from the Agency’s water provision and solid waste collection services in 2025. Between 16 and 30 June, UNRWA distributed around 79 million litres of domestic and drinking water in various areas and from different sources, reaching over 860,000 displaced people daily.
Caritas Jerusalem has launched a water trucking intervention delivering potable drinking water directly to shelters, displacement camps, and communities where access to safe water has been cut off, implemented in close coordination with local authorities and community representatives.
Al Qulub Trust operates through ground-level partners to deliver clean water and emergency relief directly to families in Gaza and the West Bank. Every donation to the Palestine Emergency Appeal goes directly to the field, funding water trucking, emergency food, medical aid, and shelter support for the families most at risk.
The Prophet ﷺ said: “The best charity is giving water to drink.” (Sunan al-Nasai, 3664)
He also said: “Whoever relieves a Muslim of a hardship from the hardships of this world, Allah will relieve him of a hardship from the hardships of the Day of Judgement.” (Sahih Muslim, 2699)
And in his Last Sermon, delivered on the plain of Arafat, he declared: “Your blood, your property, and your honour are sacred to one another, as sacred as this day of yours, in this month of yours, in this city of yours.”
The lives of the people of Gaza are sacred. Their thirst is a call that reaches every Muslim with the means to respond. The Prophet ﷺ declared water the best charity. Gaza’s families need water more urgently than almost anyone on earth right now.
These two realities, one Prophetic and one humanitarian, point in exactly the same direction. Toward giving. Toward action. Toward refusing to let the crisis continue without a Muslim response.
The water crisis in Gaza is vast. But your response does not need to match its scale to matter. It only needs to be sincere and immediate.
Al Qulub Trust’s Palestine Emergency Appeal funds clean water trucking, emergency food parcels, medical aid, and shelter support for families in Gaza and the West Bank. Every pound donated through the 100% Donation Policy reaches the field. Every gift is Gift Aid-eligible for UK taxpayers, adding 25p to every £1 at no extra cost.
Pair your Gaza donation with a Sadaqah Jariyah water well through our Water and Sanitation Appeal, funding long-term clean water infrastructure in communities across Uganda, Pakistan, and beyond.
What is the main source of water in Gaza?
The Coastal Aquifer Basin has historically been Gaza’s primary water source, providing around 90 percent of supply before the conflict. However, 97 percent of the aquifer’s water was already classified as unfit for human consumption by WHO standards before October 2023, due to decades of overextraction, seawater intrusion, and sewage contamination.
How much water does the average person in Gaza have access to now?
In the most recent reporting periods, half of all families in Gaza have less than 6 litres of water per person per day. This is the bare minimum humanitarian standard. The WHO recommends 100 litres per person per day for basic needs. At the height of the early crisis in December 2023, some displaced children were surviving on 1.5 to 2 litres per day.
Why can’t Gaza just use desalination?
Gaza does have desalination infrastructure, including a large EU-funded plant built by UNICEF. But desalination requires electricity or fuel to operate. Since electricity to Gaza was cut following October 7, desalination plants have depended entirely on fuel deliveries. When fuel supply is restricted or blocked, the plants stop. Without continuous operation, the membranes inside the plants suffer permanent damage.
Is the water crisis in Gaza man-made?
Yes, as UNICEF stated directly in June 2025. The technical solutions exist. The barrier is political. If fuel and humanitarian aid flow unimpeded, water production can be restored relatively quickly. Without that access, no amount of humanitarian effort can compensate.
What diseases does contaminated water cause in Gaza?
Current and recent data from UNRWA and WHO document large outbreaks of diarrhoeal disease, hepatitis A, scabies, lice, impetigo, and respiratory infections. Cases of non-bloody diarrhoea surged 39 times and acute jaundice 343 times compared to pre-conflict levels. Waterborne illnesses now account for 44 percent of all healthcare consultations in Gaza.
How can I help with the Gaza water crisis specifically?
Al-Qulub Trust’s Water and Sanitation Appeal funds direct water access projects in Gaza, Pakistan, and Uganda. Every donation contributes to water trucking, well rehabilitation, and hygiene supplies reaching the people who need them most.
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