Many thanks to Dr. Dianne Woodward, a former lecturer in Biological Sciences, and a manager at the Galilee Foundation, a UK charity empowering Palestinian youth since 2007, for writing a compelling article for Al Jazeera, “Toxic waste of war on Gaza reached Israel”, highlighting how the ecocidal impact of Gaza’s genocidal and ongoing 34-month assault on the Gaza Strip is creating a monstrous public health crisis, not just for the Palestinians, but also for the Israelis themselves.
Typically, Israel’s leadership was blinded by its own genocidal fury and its appalling supremacism to such an extent that it never dawned on them that, by bombarding Gaza, its immediate neighbour, with more deadly weapons than have ever been dropped anywhere on earth on an area of comparable size, and by deliberately destroying its entire infrastructure, including the whole of its sewage system, it was paving the way for the impact of this frenzy of unforgivable depravity to, literally, wash up on its own shores.
As Dr. Woodward explained:
Gaza shares the Mediterranean, coastal ecosystems and coastal aquifers with Israel. The destruction of its electric power and sanitation infrastructure forces over 100,000 cubic metres of raw, untreated sewage into the Mediterranean Sea or on land every day. Because in this part of the Mediterranean currents move primarily from south to north, this waste is carried straight up the coast into Israeli waters.
The Ashkelon desalination plant in southern Israel has been forced to shut down multiple times due to high faecal bacteria contamination from Gaza’s wastewater. Raw sewage also triggers toxic algae blooms blocking and damaging desalination filtration systems, as well as creating dead zones where fishing would normally happen.
Wastewater toxins, heavy metals and pathogens are absorbed by local marine life. Because fish migrate across maritime boundaries, contaminated seafood poses a direct health hazard to Palestinian as well as Israeli consumers. Raw sewage carries the same pathogens afflicting Gaza into the shared marine environment. Its northward drift directly impacts Israeli coastal cities.
Although pathogens can persist and migrate under certain conditions, pathogen contaminated groundwater is unlikely to feed into Israeli municipal water supplies, but can still affect the shared aquifer and surrounding environment.
Salts and other chemical contaminants can travel much farther and are often a bigger long-term aquifer concern. They can contaminate a shared groundwater system and reduce the quality and usability of the aquifer over time for irrigation, agriculture and drinking.
Dr. Woodward noted that, earlier this month, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and representatives of the Board of Peace established under Donald Trump to, ostensibly, oversee a new Palestinian-led administration in Gaza, “agreed to set up a working group on sanitation and public health affecting both Israel and Gaza”, although its “membership and detailed operating structure” have not been made public.
Hellbound and Down 