Water delivery drivers gamble with death

By Agence France-Presse in Gaza City | China Daily | Updated: 2014-08-26 06:54

Mohammed al-Khatib fears for his life every time he gets behind the wheel. In wartime, providing drinking water to homes and schools in Gaza means risking death.

At 23, Khatib is a veteran of two previous wars between Hamas and Israel, in 2008 and 2012, but nothing prepared him for the bombings, shredded nerves and death toll this time around.

"When I'm driving, I always feel frightened, upset and nervous," he told AFP in the small warehouse where he loads up his truck with drinking water, as Israeli airstrikes boom in the distance.

It's an essential job in Gaza, where at least 90 percent of municipal running water is not fit to drink and war damage means that for many people, the only water comes from private vendors or desalination plants.

But at his boss Hossam Huneif's desalination plant, down a sandy track in Gaza City, Khatib is one of the few drivers who turn up. Many of the regulars have stayed away since war broke out in July.

Khatib said he is exhausted from overwork, and lack of security, fuel and electricity. Then there are the horrors he has encountered.

"Perhaps I'll go to fill a house with water and find that house has been targeted by an Israeli airstrike.

"For example, the Mata family. I always filled their tank, then one day we went and their house wasn't there anymore. It was bombed."

Three of his friends have been killed and others have been injured. At home, his family of eight has swollen to 30, as they welcome in refugees escaping the worst fighting in eastern Gaza.

"Mohammed has a brave heart," said Huneif, the plant owner, with a smile.

Pointing at another driver who has just sauntered into the warehouse, he adds: "When he hears a bomb going off, he stays at home."

"If there is bombing after 3 pm, his wife calls him all the time, saying, 'Come home, come home'," Huneif chuckles.

"There's another driver who's only been to work one day since the war started. His family locked the door and said you can't work!"

Huneif owns the plant, a small warehouse on a corner block where donkey carts rumble past.

Trucks are parked around the corner. In the morning, they fill up with water and set off to supply schools and homes across north and central Gaza, navigating craters and rumbling past bombed-out wrecks.

The charity Oxfam estimates at least 600,000 people - a third of Gaza's 1.8 million people - are without running water.

Many others get running water as little as one or two hours every two days, such as in the badly destroyed neighborhood of Shejaiya, and repairs have been on hold since airstrikes resumed.

Before the war, Huneif was fending off growing competition from other desalination plants.

In wartime, his 24-year-old son, Mahmud, fresh out of college and an IT specialist, has had to take on shifts to replace drivers too nervous to work.

"At the beginning of the war, I didn't have a problem distributing water, but after the tanks and soldiers came in and people evacuated to the center, I faced many difficulties," Mahmud said.

"People would stop the truck in the middle of the street, saying 'Please, my child doesn't have water to drink,' and people would climb onto of the vehicle in their rush to get water," he added.