Each stage of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza highlights a new atrocity, almost as if the previous one has fallen prey to media fatigue. Lately it has been an acute lack of food. The intentional starvation of children, in particular, torments the conscience of everyone who has seen the images. Famine, it has been said, now kills more than the bombs. But the bombs are still falling and taking their ruinous toll. So, too, has the first crisis faced by Gazans back in October 2023, lack of access to drinking water, which has only sharpened over time.

A recent UN report estimated that almost 90 percent of the strip’s water and sanitation infrastructure has been seriously damaged or destroyed by Israeli forces. Many of those dying are succumbing to dehydration, and much more quickly than from hunger and malnutrition — a human, after all, cannot survive three days without water. Pound for pound, a truckload of food may be more sustaining than a delivery of water bottles, but the latter is more urgently needed.

Aside from the targeted destruction of wells, boreholes, desalination facilities, and the water distribution network, the Israeli authorities have minimized the flow through three major pipelines — al-Montar, Bani Suhaila, and Bani Saeed — which it directly controls, and which supply the governorates of Gaza City, Khan Yunis, and Deir el-Balah, respectively. These were first shut off in October 2023 and have been opened only intermittently since then.