The Three Percent Solution: Israel’s Formula for Slow-Motion Genocide

The above title, and this introductory paragraph—admittedly provocative and brimming with rhetoric—are both mine (tp): Guilty as charged. The stories that follow, however, reflect the work of award-winning journalist and author Sandy Tolan, one of the few voices being given a hearing in the West regarding Israel’s ever tightening stranglehold on the 2 million imprisoned people of Gaza. We’ve all become used to hearing about–and then quickly forgetting–the world’s “looming” humanitarian catastrophes. But most of them, like the present one in Gaza (not to mention Yemen), are not only 100% preventable but exist solely because they serve the perverse interests of some cluster of state actors and their global enablers. The Gaza crisis is “made in Israel”, plain and simple. Especially if you’re an American citizen—whose government rubber-stamps Israeli policies and actions via air-tight protection in the UN plus an obscene, $10-million-a-day military aid giveaway, while at the same time cutting all humanitarian and development aid to the Palestinians—then you owe it to yourself to read (or listen to) ONE of the following stories— your choice. Tolan, I have found, has a unique way of bringing such crises into focus, putting them in context, and giving them a human face.  Sandy Tolan’s recent reporting trip to document the growing water crisis in Gaza has led to stories in The Daily Beast, on PRI, a two-part series for Al Jazeera English, and an interview on the BBC World Service. Barely three percent of Gaza’s drinking water is fit for human consumption, and the crisis is claiming lives. Children face the most serious risk. Follow Sandy on Twitter for the latest on the ongoing #Gaza water catastrophe and potential #Water4Gaza solutions.

NOT A DROP TO DRINK   Gaza’s Dying of Thirst, and Its Water Crisis Will Become a Threat to Israel With Gaza’s water system on the verge of “collapse” a humanitarian catastrophe looms, including potential epidemics. The consequences will reach far beyond Gaza’s borders. by Sandy Tolan SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty GAZA – Mohammed Nimnim carries the water for his family. On a scorching late morning last summer, the 15-year-old pushed an old wheelchair piled high with empty plastic jugs through Gaza’s Shati (Beach) refugee camp. He rattled past modest groceries, makeshift tire shops, and graffiti praising Gaza’s martyrs, down broken concrete lanes, and toward the local mosque, where sputtering taps provide the family’s only source of drinking water. No luck. Although it was 94 degrees and oppressively humid, the taps at the mosque were shut off. Mohammed turned around, empty-handed. He walked back under a pounding sun through the Beach Camp, a place whose very name taunts its residents. Barely 100 meters from the Mediterranean, the 87,000 refugees squeezed onto half a square kilometer here face a growing crisis of scarce and contaminated water. Mohammed’s mom, Abeer Nimnim, paused to greet us as her son returned with the empty jugs. “May God give you health!” she exclaimed to her visitors. Then she got to the point: “It’s hot and suffocating!” Click here to read more.

Gaza Water Crisis by Sandy Tolan In the Mideast’s hotly contested Gaza Strip, where three out of four people are refugees, access to electricity and clean water is severely limited. The unsafe drinking water has led to a worsening health crisis for Gaza’s children, who suffer from diarrhea, kidney disease, stunted growth, and impaired IQ. The problems include the lack of electricity to run Gaza’s sewage treatment plant, and the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Sandy Tolan reports from the Gaza Strip for PRI’s Environmental News Magazine, Living on Earth. Click here to listen to the full story.

Gaza’s drinking water spurs blue baby syndrome, serious illnessesContaminated and scarce water owing to Israel’s brutal siege and bombing of infrastructure leads to death and disease.by Sandy Tolan Gaza – The unshaven doctor with circles under his eyes enters the children’s ward at Al Nassar hospital in Gaza City. It’s a Thursday evening, almost the weekend. The ward is bleak and eerily quiet, but for the occasional wail of an infant. At each cubicle, sectioned off by curtains, it’s a similar image: A baby lies alone in a bed, hooked up to tubes, wires and a generator; a mother sits in silent witness at the bedside. Dr Mohamad Abu Samia, the hospital’s director of paediatric medicine, exchanges a few quiet words with one mother, then gently lifts the infant’s gown, revealing a scar from heart surgery nearly half the length of her body. At the next cubicle, he attends to a child suffering from severe malnutrition. She lies still, her tiny body connected to a respirator. Because electricity runs only four hours a day in Gaza, the baby must stay here, where generators keep her alive. Click here to read more.

How can Gaza’s contaminated water catastrophe be solved?Barely three percent of Gaza’s drinking water wells is fit for human consumption, and the crisis is claiming livesby Sandy Tolan Gaza – When it comes to survival in Gaza, safe, clean drinking water is not at the top of Mousa Hillah’s list of priorities. Since the 2014 war, Hillah, known to neighbours and family as Abu Ali, has had far bigger worries, which are etched deeply into the exhausted face of the 48-year-old grandfather. Dodging shell fire from Israeli tanks, he fled with his family from the destruction of his Shuja’iyya neighbourhood, flattened by Israel in an attack so devastating – 7,000 shells in barely an hour – that it astonished even US military officials. (“Holy bejeezus!” one retired general exclaimed.)  The family took refuge for months in an in-law’s house near the sea, along with 50 other people. When they returned, Abu Ali found his home – the one he had built after 30 years of working construction in Israel – utterly destroyed. Click here to read more. * * * NEW / January 2019 And, from Israel’s chief enabler on the world stage… Palestinian School And Sewage Projects Unfinished As U.S. Cuts Final Bit Of Aid Gaza Realities in 90 seconds: (click on image below)