Israel isn’t just killing Palestinians seeking food aid. It’s killing people waiting in line for water, too.
Palestinians carry the bodies of relatives who were killed in Israeli strikes targeting a water filling station, at the Al-Awda hospital, in Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza, 13 July 2025
Tareq S. Hajjaj reports in Mondoweiss on 15 July 2025:
Hungry, thirsty, and desperate for some relief, Sha’da Abu Jabal, 36, and her six-year-old son Ahmad headed to a water distribution point in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday, July 13. Each carried a jerrycan, hoping to return to their displacement center with clean drinking water.
The mother and young son joined a long line of people waiting their turn, when suddenly the Israeli army bombed the distribution point, killing twelve people, including eight children, and injuring more than twenty others. Most of them were women and children, due to the fact that in Gaza, survival now divides families: men go out seeking food under bullets, and women and children go out seeking water.
Sha’da and her son miraculously survived the strike and quickly made their way back to the displacement center. They were spared from death, but were still without water. Like thousands of other families in Gaza, their struggle with intense thirst continued, due to severe water shortages as a result of Israel’s siege on the strip.
“We don’t know what exactly we’re supposed to face in this war,” Sha’da says. “Are we up against warplanes and death? Or hunger and starvation? Or thirst and the lack of water?”
“Israel has provided us with every possible path to death. We can no longer bear it. And if we adults can endure, how do we look at our children, watching them cry out in thirst when we can’t even give them a sip of water? What are we supposed to do to survive this war?”, she asked.