The United Nations official overseeing water and sanitation in the Gaza Strip is praising Canada’s support for Palestinians but warns that some of its aid money is being squandered by Israel’s attacks on water facilities and restrictions on aid groups.
Jonathan Veitch, the head of UNICEF for the Palestinian territories, said the Israeli military’s destruction of facilities like the Canada Well and attacks on those paid to deliver water are making survival harder for desperate families now living in rat-infested tents.
“On the ground, the situation is pretty horrific,” Veitch told The Canadian Press in an exclusive interview during his visit to Ottawa earlier this month.
“All we’re asking for is the basic humanitarian needs to be met through a recovery process and fixing some of these systems.”
Veitch spent five days on a rare visit to the Gaza Strip in early July just before coming to Ottawa.
The United States’ war on Iran and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon have diverted media attention away from the Gaza Strip. UNICEF says at least 200 children have been killed by hostilities since a ceasefire took effect last October.
“The conditions on the ground haven’t improved markedly. The ceasefire was agreed last October and since then, basically, a child a day is killed,” he said.
Gaza was already a crowded territory before the war started in 2023. Most of the Palestinians living there are deemed to be refugees by the UN.
A brutal Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 prompted Israel to bombard the territory. Since then, tens of thousands of people have died in the Gaza Strip and most of the enclave’s buildings have been badly damaged.
The Israeli army has expanded its control of the area since the ceasefire began, Veitch said, and 2.1 million Gazans have been confined to just 30 per cent of the territory.
Families are living in makeshift tents surrounded by mounds of waste, Veitch said. Nighttime temperatures in Gaza have seldom dropped below 25 C in recent weeks.
“We’ve literally had millions and millions of rats that have been breeding and they come into the tents at night,” he said.
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“I’ve seen some of those children going to hospital with the bite of the rat on their face. And because of the solid waste, we also have huge problems with insects and skin infections.”
Medical officials in Gaza often can’t access antibiotics and reagents needed for medical testing, Veitch said. Israel allows tarps, plastic sheets and supplies into Gaza to keep people alive, but bans generators, cement and other items that go beyond basic survival needs, he said.
He said Israel requires “enormous detail” for imports of any materials for restoring water infrastructure, including exact specifications and photographs.
It’s part of the Israeli military’s system for keeping out items it argues could be used for both civilian and military ends — “dual-use” items.
Israel says it is preventing Hamas from building weapons or diverting supplies into the black market to finance its attacks. But aid groups say Israel’s restrictions are far too broad.
Israel has cited similar concerns when calling on international aid organizations to provide extensive personal data and sensitive information about their staff and contractors. It has barred aid groups that have failed to comply with its reporting standards.
As the UN’s child-protection agency, UNICEF focuses on providing education, health care and nutrition services.
But Veitch said his agency has had to take on water, sanitation and hygiene services for all of Gaza as what the UN calls the “provider of last resort” — because Israel has barred aid groups for not complying with its new standards.
He said the Mekorot water pipeline, a lifeline for the territory, is leaking badly and officials can’t get supplies to fix it. Desalination plants treat water to the point where can be used for cleaning but not for drinking, he said.
Israel started allowing shipments of plastic water pipes to Gaza only recently, he added.
In April, Israeli troops shot dead two drivers working for UNICEF who were filling up water tanks in Gaza. Now, Veitch said, UNICEF water trucks travelling in Gaza must be driven by UNICEF staff and be accompanied by armoured vehicles and security officers.
“We carry on doing the water trucking over and over again each day, which is incredibly expensive and costs Canadian taxpayers and others money,” he said.
“We can fix this relatively straightforwardly by bringing in the equipment that is required to fix those pipes, to reduce the leaks in them, and to restart some of the pumping stations that have broken or were destroyed during the war.”
The office of Randeep Sarai, Canada’s secretary of state for international development, has been asked for comment.
In July 2024, Israeli soldiers filmed themselves blowing up a water facility in the Tel al-Sultan district of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The facility is known as the Canada Well as it sits in an area where Canadian foreign aid in Gaza had been focused for decades.
In a statement last week, the Israeli Defense Forces said it is still assessing what happened.
“The IDF views with severity any conduct that may involve damage to civilian infrastructure in violation of international law and IDF directives,” the military’s media team wrote to The Canadian Press.
The Israeli military agency that oversees humanitarian work in Gaza, COGAT, has acknowledged the spread of disease and water shortages in Gaza. It insists that it is making every effort to provide support while blocking Hamas from stealing aid or using it to build weapons.
“Food, medical, and (water, sanitation and hygiene) supplies are entering the Gaza Strip daily, including specific dual-use items that go through a rigorous security examination mechanism,” the agency wrote on X, where it publishes official updates.
“These shipments happen in full collaboration with the international community to guarantee that this humanitarian aid reaches civilians and not Hamas.”
COGAT added that it is crafting a response to a spike in chickenpox cases in Gaza.
Veitch praised Canada for continuing to support UNICEF and UN agencies through funding that isn’t pegged to specific projects, so that aid workers can put dollars toward the most critical needs on the ground.
“Canada has been definitely punching above its weight in terms of national humanitarian assistance towards Gaza and also the West Bank,” he said.
He said kids are being put into makeshift classrooms thanks to donations from Canada’s private sector and small-scale monthly contributions from its citizens.
“Giving a little bit, week in week out, has made a huge difference to help those children,” he said.
He said aid and advocacy from countries like Canada ended a famine in Gaza by boosting nutritional supplies and cutting acute malnutrition among young children.
Gaza has one of the youngest populations on earth — half of the enclave’s residents are children — and the war has left many orphans and amputees.
“Every child is traumatized. They’re in a very bad situation,” Veitch said, adding that peace will be harder to achieve if thousands of people grow up with no opportunities or education.
“We’ll have a whole lost generation.”