Gaza Floods Force Camps to Choose: Pump Out Water or Keep It Drinkable

Rainstorms hammered Gaza over the weekend of November 7 and 8, drowning displacement sites and pushing the enclave's already broken sewage networks past their limit. In Al Maghazi refugee camp, municipal engineer Imad Abdel Jawad says his teams face a choice they can't win: run the pumps that clear floodwater from shelters, or keep the fuel reserved for the wells that supply drinking water. In some of the camp's tents, he says, the water stood well over a foot deep.

The numbers are staggering. Gaza's Government Media Office says at least 70,000 tents sheltering displaced Palestinians flooded within 12 hours, while OCHA estimated by November 8 that 1.4 million people, 65 percent of Gaza's population, were living in tents or shelters. Humanitarian partners had fielded appeals from more than 26,000 households whose shelters or belongings were damaged, according to the UN office. An April assessment by the European Union, United Nations and World Bank had already counted more than 371,888 housing units damaged or destroyed and around 1.9 million people displaced, often repeatedly.

For Hanan Saied, 46, the storm soaked the bedding and clothing she shares with her seven children in a shelter with mud walls, cracks and plastic sheeting overhead. Stones and mud fell on the family, she says, and her children bailed water with buckets while her eldest son tried to patch the structure. She spent the night holding her daughter Sara, who has asthma, to keep her warm. The family has no nebuliser and no electricity to run one.

The problem runs under the streets. Israeli bombardment damaged sewage manhole covers in Al Maghazi, Jawad says, and others were stolen or wore out, letting rainwater pour into networks that can't handle the extra volume and forcing wastewater back up. Replacement covers aren't available locally, and the materials to fabricate alternatives are scarce and expensive. Jawad says the municipality can't fund everything, so wells and the generators that run them come first. OCHA's November 5 report said Israeli authorities kept particularly tight restrictions on engine oil, lubricants, spare parts and new generators, and that restoring steadier power would require Israeli permission to import solar panels, reconnect the grid and restart Gaza's power plant. The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to WIRED Middle East's request for comment.

The health fallout is already showing at the clinic. Dr Asma Saleh, a general practitioner at UNRWA's Al Maghazi clinic, says the facility sees around 120 children a day, including roughly 22 with influenza-like illness and 13 with gastroenteritis as the rainy season sets in. She points to collapsed infrastructure, streets running with sewage and scarce medical supplies as compounding factors. Jawad adds that trucks and earth-moving machinery are needed to bring material to the muddy sites where water collects. Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs account on X posted on November 8 that, contrary to popular belief, Israel does not control the weather, without explicitly mentioning the floods.