'Water used as a weapon in Gaza', Msf's complaint against Israel

"My nephew was in Nuseirat. He had gone to get drinking water, he was in line with other children and they killed him. He was 10 years old. Going to fetch water shouldn't be dangerous". Water is used as a weapon in Gaza. The story, which dates back to July 2025, comes from Hanan, a Palestinian from Gaza City, and is contained in the new report by Médecins Sans Frontières 'Water as a Weapon: Israel's Destruction and Deprivation of Water and Sanitation in Gaza' in which it becomes clear that the Israeli authorities' use of access to water has been used as a weapon against Palestinians.

The NGO documented that access to basic hygiene, including clean water, soap, nappies and hygiene products, has become extremely difficult in the Strip. People are forced to dig holes in the sand and use them as latrines, with inevitable consequences: these holes flood and contaminate the surrounding environment and groundwater with faeces. Lack of access to water also leads to an increase in diseases, including respiratory skin infections and diarrhoeal diseases.

Claire San Filippo, Msf's emergency manager, explains that 'Palestinians have been injured and killed simply trying to get water'. Israel - according to data collected by the NGO - has destroyed or damaged almost 90% of the water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza, including desalination plants, wells, pipelines and sewage systems. Msf teams have documented cases where the Israeli army has fired at clearly identifiable tankers or destroyed wells that represented a lifeline for tens of thousands of people. Violence often occurred during the distribution of water to the population, injuring Palestinians and aid workers and damaging equipment. The result is that while the UN recognises as a basic right a standard of 50 litres per person per day, even today in Gaza the average daily supply is only seven litres of drinking water and sixteen litres of water for domestic use.

The Israeli army's raids continue. The IDF announced yesterday that it had demolished fourteen kilometres of Hamas tunnels in the north of the Strip. And in an Israeli attack in the Beit Lahiya area a Palestinian teenager was killed and one person was injured. This was reported by the Palestinian news agency Wafa, adding that the 15-year-old boy killed was named Ayham al-Omari.

Of the suffering of the Palestinian people yesterday the Cardinal of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who in a long pastoral letter to the faithful of his diocese tackles the issue with his characteristic frankness: Pizzaballa writes that one cannot "draw up a ranking of suffering", but "there is a difference between those who exercise power and those who are subjected to it, between those who govern and those who are governed, between those who possess weapons and those who are threatened by them, between those who occupy and those who are occupied", emphasising that "responsibilities are different. Recognising this difference is an act of respect for justice and truth'.