‘Death’ of Gaza swimmer puts spotlight on pollution
Negotiator for captives quits
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories, Aug 26, (AFP): The death of a little boy after swimming in polluted seawater has put the spotlight on Gaza’s pollution crisis and the human impact of desperate electricity shortages in the Palestinian enclave.
Mohammed al-Sayis, five, died late last month a few days after swimming in the sewage-polluted waters, with his brothers also hospitalised, his family and health ministry said.
Dozens of others have been treated after swimming along the strip’s filthy Mediterranean coastline in the past two months, a ministry spokesman in Gaza said.
Pollution in Gaza is not a new phenomena – a decade of a crippling Israeli blockade, coupled with three devastating wars with the Jewish state since 2008, have left infrastructure falling apart.
But the worsening spat between the two leading Palestinian political blocs has exacerbated an already grim situation for the two million residents of the impoverished and denselypopulated Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has sought to squeeze the Islamist group Hamas which controls Gaza.
In April, it reduced the amount of electricity they buy from Israel for Gaza, where the enclave’s sole power plant is barely operational.
The electricity shortage is so severe that all of Gaza’s sewage treatment facilities have ground to a halt in recent months, according to Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights.
As a result, sewage that was previously cleaned and pumped further out into the sea is being released along the coast untreated.
At least 100,000 cubic metres (3.5 million cubic feet) of sewage is being pumped into the sea each day, according to the United Nations, which says more than twothirds of the coastline is polluted.
The UN has previously estimated the whole of Gaza will be uninhabitable by 2020, but a recent report has said that catastrophe is likely to come sooner.
Ahmed Halas, an official in the environment agency, told AFP all of Gaza’s beaches are polluted to varying degrees and the health ministry advises against swimming altogether.