For most of the 2 million people in this overcrowded strip of land – largely cut off from the outside world – the beach and sea are the only affordable form of recreation in the heat of summer. The only option now is to swim and even fish in filthy water
While pollution of Gaza’s 25 miles of beaches is not new, what is different is the degree. These days, according to the last environmental survey, 73% of Gaza’s coastline is dangerously polluted with sewage amid an energy crisis that is now also affecting Israel across the border wall, sharply up from 40-50% a year ago.
The reason is simple. After 10 years of an Israeli-led blockade that has seen Gaza’s impoverished urban infrastructure decay, the current decision by the Palestinian Authority under president Mahmoud Abbas to cut electricity to the coastal strip has impacted Gaza’s rudimentary sewage treatment.
Without electricity to power its lagoons, treatment works and sewage pumps, Gaza’s waste managers have been forced to make a choice, permit the cities to flood – or allow raw sewage to escape the overflows into the sea.
It is a new level of contamination that is not only having an environmental effect, but a profound social one too. In an overcrowded strip of land home to two million people, and largely cut off from the outside world, for many the beach and sea are the only affordable – and accessible – form of recreation.
The catch 22 – as Shatet concedes – is that it will need power to operate. “We have 70 sewage lifting stations across Gaza,” he adds. “But the main priority right now is to stop flooding in cities when the pumps are working. That means that 15,000 metric tonnes of raw sewage is going into the sea as well as 110,000 tonnes that are partially treated.
‘The worst it’s been’: children continue to swim as raw sewage floods Gaza beach
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