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Israeli authorities are systematically depriving people in Gaza of the water they need to live, Doctors Without Borders warned Tuesday, decrying a campaign of “collective punishment” against Palestinians. The extensive destruction of civilian water infrastructure in Gaza coupled with obstruction of access constitutes “an integral part of Israel’s genocide”, said the medical charity, which goes by its French acronym MSF. In a report entitled “Water as a Weapon”, MSF said the “engineered scarcity” was occurring alongside “direct killing of civilians, the devastation of health facilities, (and) the destruction of homes”. Together, this amounted to “the deliberate infliction of destructive and inhumane conditions of life on the Palestinian population in Gaza”, warned the report, based on testimonies and data MSF collected in 2024 and 2025. “Israeli authorities know that without water, life ends,” MSF emergency manager Claire San Filippo said in a statement. “Yet they have deliberately and systematically obliterated water infrastructure in Gaza, whilst consistently blocking water-related supplies from entering.” Despite an October ceasefire that largely halted the Gaza war that began after Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel, the territory remains gripped by daily violence as Israeli strikes continue and both the Israeli military and Hamas accuse each other of breaking the truce. ‘Engineered’ scarcityThe MSF report, which was slammed by Israel, pointed to data from the United Nations, European Union and World Bank indicating that Israel had destroyed or damaged nearly 90% of water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza. “Desalination plants, boreholes, pipelines and sewage systems have been rendered inoperable or inaccessible,” it said. The charity documented several incidents where its clearly identified water trucks and boreholes had been shot at or destroyed. “Palestinians have been injured and killed simply trying to access water,” San Filippo said. The charity said that besides the local authorities, it was the largest producer and main distributor of drinking water in Gaza. Last month, it provided more than 5.3 million litres of water each day, which meets the minimum needs of more than 407,000 people, or a fifth of Gaza’s population. However, throughout the war, “Israeli military displacement orders have locked our teams out of areas where we had provided water to hundreds of thousands of people,” the MSF statement said. ‘Perfect storm’MSF said a third of its requests to bring in critical water and sanitation supplies, including water desalination units, pumps, water tanks, insect repellent, chlorine and other chemicals to treat water, had “been rejected or left unanswered”. San Filippo also cautioned that the deprivation of water, “combined with dire living conditions, extreme overcrowding, and a collapsed health system, create a perfect storm for the spread of diseases”. MSF called on Israel to “immediately restore water for people at the required levels in Gaza”. It urged Israel’s allies to “use their leverage to pressure Israel to stop impeding humanitarian access”. COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body in charge of Palestinian civilian affairs, harshly criticised “the baseless claims” presented in the report. It maintained in a statement that “water supply in Gaza consistently exceeds humanitarian thresholds”, insisting that “far from ‘preventing’ access, Israel facilitates and provides water from its own sources”.MSF’s “operational delays” were a result of the organisation’s “refusal to follow standard registration protocols and their history of employing individuals linked to terror”, COGAT charged. Contacted by AFP, MSF did not wish to react to Israel’s accusations. 

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that despite the ceasefire agreement, Israel continues to use humanitarian aid as a means of pressure against the Palestinians. In a press statement on Sunday, MSF's project coordinator in Gaza, Caroline Willemen, stressed that humanitarian aid sent to the Gaza Strip should not be tied to any political conditions.Willemen explained that Israeli attacks on the Strip have decreased significantly since the ceasefire agreement began, but the Israeli army launched a large-scale offensive on October 19, continuing to fire almost daily. She noted that the humanitarian situation in Gaza has not improved significantly, as water and shelter shortages persist, and hundreds of thousands are still living in tents as winter approaches.MSF teams, she pointed out, continue to record cases of severe malnutrition among children under five and pregnant women. The nutritional situation remains alarming despite the slight improvements, and providing daily health services remains extremely difficult despite the ceasefire.MSF's project coordinator added that Palestinians in Gaza have been experiencing the horror of genocide for two years. There is a dire need for aid, and rebuilding Gaza will take a long time, but the minimum basic humanitarian conditions in the Strip have not yet been reached.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) warned of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza Strip, stating that over a million people face "constant terror" after receiving urgent evacuation orders from Gaza City ahead of the large-scale ground offensive by Israeli occupation forces.Secretary-General of the organisation, Christopher Lockyer, stated on Sunday that escaping the intense bombardment is impossible for many elderly people, the sick, pregnant women, and the wounded, warning that survivors of this tragic journey will find themselves in overcrowded areas in central and southern Gaza that lack safety and basic necessities for survival.He emphasized that what is happening in Gaza goes beyond a humanitarian disaster, describing it as a systematic genocide of an entire nation, and noting that Israeli occupation forces are committing these crimes with complete impunity.Lockyer added that loss of life is immense, with figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health showing over 64,000 deaths, including 20,000 children, with the real number expected to be higher due to many still trapped under the rubble.He stressed that there is no safe haven in Gaza, citing entire families being annihilated in their homes, as well as attacks on health workers and journalists documenting events, describing the bombardment an attack on both infrastructure and civilians.He further pointed out that the healthcare system in the Strip has been subjected to systematic targeting, including hospitals and medical facilities, endangering the lives of staff and patients, and reaching the level of war crimes, noting that the remaining hospitals are overcrowded and severely lacking in supplies, resulting in unnecessary suffering and preventable deaths.