Israel started work on Tuesday to connect a Gaza water facility to its electric grid, to provide water on a medium to longer-term basis to Palestinian civilians in Gaza at a rate of up to 20,000 liters per day.
Immediately upon the development being leaked, several nationalistic opposition figures and some government figures started to attack the new policy.
IDF sources said that the new policy is a critical aspect of maintaining Israel’s legitimacy globally, in order to continue the war against Hamas.
They said that since the International Court of Justice issued an order earlier in the Spring which could be interpreted as an order to end the war, the IDF and Israel have been under much stronger pressure to go beyond minimal assistance to Palestinian civilians and to facilitate humanitarian aid which meets the world’s higher expectations.
Evacuating Palestinian civilians
Further, IDF sources said that the world had been stunned by Israel’s success in evacuating 1.4 Palestinian civilians from Rafah in early May, without leading to a new humanitarian disaster.
A large part of that success, said IDF sources, was long-term planning to anticipate Palestinian civilians’ water and food needs, and with the summer hitting record temperatures in the area, absent getting the water facility in question up to full speed, there could be dire humanitarian consequences.
In addition, IDF sources said that the 1.4 million evacuated Palestinians are almost all in al-Muwasi on the Gaza coast, western Khan Yunis, or Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and that this facility will enable maintaining their water needs – all of which was part of the US not heavily opposing the Rafah invasion and ongoing military actions there.
Different IDF sources have said that the military needs six months or more of activities in Rafah to eliminate Hamas’s cross-border Philadelphi Corridor tunnels into Egypt, in order to end Hamas’s capability to rearm.
Moreover, the IDf said that it was not involved in who did or did not know from the governing coalition, but that form its standpoint, the electricity hookup for the water facility was approved by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.