The company that operates key water desalination facilities in the Gaza Strip, which supplies nearly half of the area’s population, halted operations on Tuesday. The reason is a protest against the detention of one of its employees by the Palestinian movement Hamas.
A company in the Gaza Strip that operates water desalination plants supplying nearly half of the area’s population halted operations on Tuesday to protest the detention of one of its employees by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. TASR informs about it according to a Reuters report.
- A company in Gaza halted water desalination in protest.
- The water supply will affect over a million inhabitants of the area.
- The Hamas movement detained the employee, they did not state the reasons.
- Water infrastructure in Gaza has experienced severe damage.
- The critical state of drinking water is causing a serious crisis in the region.
Company: It’s catastrophic, but we have to protect our employees
A company official said the decision to stop operations will affect more than a million people. More than 70 trucks that transport water tankers across the Gaza Strip have also stopped operating, as a result of which there may be further interruptions in supplies.
“I know it’s catastrophic, but protecting our employees is a sacred matter,” a company official told Reuters. According to him, Hamas did not give any reason for the detention of their employee on Monday evening.
The water and sewage infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed
The militant movement is gradually regaining control of areas of the Gaza Strip from which Israel withdrew, while negotiations on the future of the territory continue, writes Reuters. Israel continues to control about half of the Gaza Strip.
If the company’s protest continues, it could further worsen the crisis of access to drinking water in the Gaza Strip, which has been exacerbated by two years of war. At the beginning of the conflict, Israel stopped all water and electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip, but later restored some. Most of the water and sewage infrastructure has been destroyed, and pumps are often dependent on electricity from small generators, for which fuel is rarely available.
