Israel is facing a water crisis after five of its six desalination plants, accounting for a large share of its water consumption, were knocked offline this week by microscopic algae clogging intake pipes in the Mediterranean Sea.
The algae originated from the Nile River delta in Egypt, according to Israeli environmental experts — who warn that untreated sewage from Gaza, where Israel’s military campaign has damaged or destroyed all six wastewater-treatment plants, could only be making matters worse.
Years before the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas and the Israeli reprisal that damaged or destroyed most of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, raw sewage from Gaza occasionally floated up the coast when its treatment plants failed — due, in part, to fuel shortages imposed by Israel. That repeatedly led to the Israeli desalination facility in nearby Ashkelon shutting down.
As algae drifts north from the Nile delta, untreated sewage discharged into the sea from Gaza provides “nutrients that feed microalgal blooms,” probably intensifying their growth, said Noga Armi, chief executive of Zalul, an Israeli environmental group.
“The scientific link is well established,” Armi said. “Untreated sewage discharged into the sea from Gaza was one of the factors that contributed to the incident.”
Lior Gutman, a spokesman for the Israeli national water utility Mekorot, declined to address the role of wastewater from Gaza in the desalination plants’ shutdown but said high seawater temperatures contributed to “masses” of algae clogging the facilities.
The shutdowns this week, which forced Israel to ration water for agricultural use and draw more water from the Sea of Galilee and local reservoirs as an emergency measure, was a reminder of the dire humanitarian conditions facing 2 million Gazans — and their proximity to Israel.
Since early 2024, Gazans have faced severe water shortages and have often resorted to using makeshift latrines. Nearly 90 percent of the territory’s water infrastructure, including desalination and wastewater treatment plants, has been destroyed, and the collapse of sewage pipes has led to Gaza’s water aquifer becoming contaminated, according to the United Nations.
All six wastewater treatment plants in Gaza have been shut down, and 70 percent of sewage pumping stations are out of service, UNICEF said this week.
Every day, 40,000 cubic meters (or 10.6 million gallons) of wastewater are being discharged into the sea without treatment, while another 15,000 cubic meters are seeping into the ground through cesspits and leaks from sewage network leaks, according to WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency, citing the Palestinian Water Authority. Some international estimates run even higher.
Amal Al Louh, a 36-year-old English teacher in the city of Deir al-Balah, said her 7-month-son Mohammed began suffering chronic diarrhea after drinking water from contaminated underground wells. A doctor recommended that she change to drinking water trucked in by humanitarian agencies and buying bottled water that cost $8 a carton.
Still, her family has contracted skin conditions and infections by washing with the dirty tap water, said Louh, sharing a picture of Mohammed with large, circular rashes ringing his chest and neck.
The problem worsened dramatically after displaced residents from elsewhere in Gaza crammed into Deir al-Balah, which was not hit as hard by the war as some other parts of the territory, and set up sprawling tent cities. “Sewage is mixed with groundwater in the tent area,” Louh said. “Wastewater is getting displaced in random ways.”
This summer, when she went swimming with her family in the Mediterranean, Louh noticed that the water looked “black” and smelled like sewage. Her children fell sick after coming home, she said.
Miles away in southern Israel, the situation was dramatically different. The desalination shutdown this week triggered intense media debates about vulnerabilities in Israel’s infrastructure, but there were only scattered cases of water shortages as Mekovot began pumping four times as much water as usual from reservoirs. Ninety-nine percent of Israeli homes were fully supplied, Gutman said: “No one had a really severe shortage of drinking water or shower water.”
The state of Gaza’s sewage treatment and water supply have long been causes for concern, even before war that began in October 2023, said David Katz, an associate professor of environmental science at the University of Haifa, in Israel.
In 2017, for instance, officials from Israel and different Palestinian factions blamed each other for a lack of fuel and electricity that led to stoppages at Gaza’s wastewater treatment plants. Floating sewage then forced the Israeli desalination plant at Ashkelon to shut down.
Now, given the destruction caused by the war and a shortage of fuel and supplies, Gazan authorities may prioritize using fuel on supplying water rather than treating waste, Katz said. He added that Israel has been blocking the entry of equipment into Gaza to repair sewage facilities because they are classified as dual civilian-military use.
“There’s no shortage of blame to go around,” he said.
Still, for Israeli officials, what happened this week “is going to have to be a game changer, an absolute wake-up call for the repair of sanitation infrastructure in Gaza,” said Gidon Bromberg, Israel director at the environmental nonprofit EcoPeace Middle East.
Bromberg has been arguing for immediate repairs to Gaza’s sewage system in presentations he made in recent months to the Civil-Military Coordination Center, a body established as part of President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan. While Israeli officials have been allowing more water into Gaza since the ceasefire, they have not approved work to repair the sanitation systems, he said.
“It’s a threat to Palestinian public health, and it’s a threat to Israeli public health,” Bromberg said. “No one can ignore the science and the fact that we all share the same environment.”
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