Israeli and Palestinian based in Germany launch fundraiser to build toilets for Gazans
Tom Kellner and Seba Abu Daqa met through an online peace group and decided to team up to address one of the Strip’s most pressing needs amid the war — adequate sanitation
Gianluca Pacchiani is the Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
Two women living in Germany, one Israeli and one Palestinian, have joined forces to raise money to buy sanitary equipment for the battered civilian population of the Gaza Strip.
Tom Kellner and Seba Abu Daqa have been collecting donations since late December to buy toilets, showers and tents for displaced people’s camps in the Strip, in hopes of mitigating the threat of a deteriorating health crisis.
The war between Israel and Hamas has led to the destruction of large swaths of Gaza and the internal displacement of the vast majority of its population (75 percent, or 1.7 million out of 2.3 million people, according to the latest United Nations data).
War broke out following the October 7 onslaught on Israel by Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip. Some 3,000 terrorists crossed the border and brutally murdered 1,200 individuals, most of them civilians, in southern Israel, and abducted 253 hostages to Gaza, where some 130 are still being held.
The number of internally displaced people in Gaza from Israel’s retaliatory ground invasion is resulting in what is being described as a humanitarian crisis for the Palestinians living in ruins and refugee tent camps. These conditions have led to outbreaks of various diseases, which could also spell trouble for public health in Israel.
The displaced Gazans have been living in squalid, overcrowded winter conditions with little clean water for drinking and washing. They are exposed to high levels of food insecurity and have few functioning medical facilities at their disposal. Cases of diarrhea have reportedly skyrocketed among children, according to UNICEF.
To provide some relief to the harrowing crisis, Kellner and Abu Daqa decided to mobilize and launch a fundraiser to find a solution to one of the most pressing issues for displaced Gazans: sanitation.
The choice to invest in the construction of latrines was based on an analysis of what was urgent and what was feasible, said the fundraisers.
“Seba and I discussed a lot about what we could do because all sorts of things are needed in Gaza,” said Kellner, a Haifa native who grew up in Western Galilee.
“The real challenge is that it’s practically impossible to get stuff inside Gaza, and therefore we were looking for something that we can assist in constructing that doesn’t require imports from the outside. All the materials for these toilets are already inside Gaza, we’re just purchasing them,” she said.
Kellner and Abu Daqa both live in Germany, albeit in two different cities. Abu Daqa, who hails from the southern Gazan town of Abbasan, is a community-building consultant for an international nonprofit for women’s rights, while Kellner is a literary scholar, an editor and a cellist.
They met through an online dialogue group for Israelis and Palestinians abroad launched by Neve Shalom – Wahat al-Salam, a Jewish-Arab peace village located halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
In an interview with The Times of Israel, they discussed what they hope to achieve through their initiative.
“Our aim is to alleviate the sanitary needs of the people in Gaza,” Abu Daqa said. “There are a lot of diseases that are going to affect the whole region if they are not dealt with. It’s not only about the Palestinians. The severe health situation of Gazans will affect everybody around them,” she added.
In cooperation with a Palestinian NGO for community development, Kellner and Abu Daqa have been using the collected funds toward purchasing building materials for the units a Gaza-based company, including toilets, wood for the outside structures and plastic covers. The toilets are connected to the sewage system.
The construction work has been executed by local volunteers. Abu Daqa has managed contacts with them, assessing the needs on the ground and monitoring progress
So far, the initiative has allowed for the setting up of 18 structures scattered around Mawasi and Rafah, two areas in the southern Strip where the vast majority of Gazan civilians have been evacuated – over 1.5 million, according to estimates.
A toilet costs about NIS 1,600 ($440), the two women said, but the price can vary due to constant fluctuations in costs for building materials in the war-torn enclave, given their unpredictable availability.
The two have also been considering buying other sanitary commodities, such as diapers, sanitary pads and toilet paper, but at the time those items are hard to come by since they need to be imported from outside the Strip. Donations, which are collected through PayPal, have also been spent towards the purchase of tents built from recycled materials — given the shortage of new imported tents — and the building of showers with locally available materials.
The showers are mostly operated with salty well water. In some locations where it is not available, people need to bring their own water in bottles, which they heat in front of the shower cabinets, Abu Daqa explained.
The rudimentary structures can still go a long way in alleviating the daily hardships of displaced people who in many cases hurriedly left their homes with only a few belongings, and spend much of their day seeking food, water and basic commodities.
“Many displaced people fled with no money, and many banks don’t work. Not everyone is able to go search for building materials and build when they have children to take care of, while they are in the middle of nowhere with no roof over their head,” said Abu Daqa.
The two women launched their initiative independently from a host of established aid organizations currently operating in the Strip, which have been distributing relief supplies for displaced people, such as food, blankets and mattresses, toys for children, “dignity kits” with personal hygiene supplies, etc.
Donations for their project have come to a large extent from Israel, thanks to Tom’s network of peace activists, but also from Germany, other European countries and the US. Backlash has been minimal, despite widespread opposition to the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza among some sections of Israeli society.
“I was very surprised,” Kellner said. “I was ready for much harsher criticism, but people have generally been very supportive.”
For Abu Daqa, a Gazan native who emigrated 20 years ago, the initiative has particular personal significance, since her family is also displaced in the south of the Strip.
Her relatives managed to rent an apartment in al-Mawasi, an area that was designated a “humanitarian safe zone” by the Israeli army in the early days of the war.
“It’s not the best, but at least they’re not staying in a tent,” she said. “In the beginning, they felt safe because they were in al-Mawasi, but recently there have been bombings and military operations there, so it’s not 100% safe as we thought it was.”
“They mostly get ready-to-eat kits, from time to time they can make their own meals. But they don’t have electricity nor access to clean water,” she added.
While being more fortunate than most displaced Gazans sheltering in tents, some of Abu Daqa’s family members have suffered from disease due to poor hygienic conditions, and the war has taken a heavy psychological toll on them.
“It’s not easy, they are traumatized,” she said. “They are not able to move, and on top of that, they see so much death and destruction around them.”
Renne Ghert-Zand contributed to this report.
