Palestinians, Israelis partner to bring off-grid solutions to Gaza camps
Damour for Community Development and Arava Institute for Environmental Studies want to show international donors value of wastewater treatment, desalination, solar energy solutions
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
A pair of Israeli and Palestinian NGOs are partnering to install off-grid, solar-generated power, desalination, and wastewater treatment in three camps in Gaza serving some 10,000 people displaced by the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas terror group.
Damour for Community Development and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, the latter based in southern Israel, have a long track record of working together on such solutions in Gaza and the West Bank.
In June, the two organizations launched Jumpstarting Hope in Gaza to meet some of the enclave’s water, sanitation, hygiene, and energy needs until large-scale rebuilding starts.
Under the management of Tahani Abu Daqqa, an entrepreneur and environmental activist with more than 40 years of experience in community and women’s empowerment work in the strip, Damour has set up and is managing two camps for displaced people in Muwasi in southwest Gaza. Some 4,500 people live in tents in the Mesk and Leyan camps (named for the first two babies born there). Around 700 people live in the Zomi camp, with another 700 living outside but using the camp’s services.
The Zomi camp is named after Australian citizen Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom, who was among seven World Central Kitchen volunteers killed in April in an Israeli airstrike on central Gaza’s Deir El-Balah.
Damour has almost finished establishing a third camp, Hind Rajab, north of Muwasi, to serve 5,000 people.
Tahani Abu Daqqa told The Times of Israel that she had raised money to build the camps from family and friends, a Germany-based nonprofit, and UNICEF.
Based in Gaza, she had kickstarted the initiative, after which Damour, whose board she serves on, got involved.
David Lehrer, who heads the Arava Institute’s Center for Applied Environmental Diplomacy, told The Times of Israel that the institute’s role was to raise funds for the off-grid technology in clean water, wastewater, and energy, to obtain approval from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) to get the equipment into Gaza and to ensure it reached the Kerem Shalom crossing point, from which Damour could collect it on the Gazan side. Damour has field workers to install, operate, and maintain the equipment.
An international humanitarian organization has donated four solar-operated desalination machines to turn salty water from wells into drinking water. Lehrer explained that the machines would provide enough potable water for the three camps and replace expensive and hard-to-obtain water bought from tankers, adding that he hoped they would be in situ within a month.
The Zomi camp, the smallest and best organized according to Lehrer, has been chosen to model desalination, solar panels for electricity, and sewage recycling.
“We plan to supply energy, water, and wastewater treatment to the whole population [of the camp] as a flagship of what can be done,” Lehrer said. “That will hopefully interest the international donor community to do it for 10,000 people [in the three camps] and hopefully in other camps, too.”
Wastewater flowing into the sea
Gaza’s sewage treatment facilities are standing idle thanks to war damage and a lack of electricity to drive the pumps. Human waste from the entire enclave flows into the aquifers and the Mediterranean Sea.
Lehrer said that while there were toilets in the Damour camps, they drained into cesspits below, which had to be cleaned out manually with buckets every three days. Alternatively, the pits were covered and the toilets had to be moved.
The Arava Institute is working on permission from COGAT to send a Laguna off-gird wastewater treatment machine into Zomi. As a pilot, the machine will treat 500 people’s waste. Lehrer said the system would take around three months to build.
Both the desalination and wastewater treatment machines have solar panels. Lehrer said the plan was to add another roughly 10 kilowatts of solar power, with battery storage, to power the kitchen, a central laundry, lighting, and cellphone charging points.
Solar power was the most reliable, he added. Generators needed fuel, which was hard to obtain.
Lehrer added that the institute had received approval to send 10 caravans to the camps for clinics and administrative buildings.
“I think COGAT understands the situation and is very concerned, especially about wastewater, because they’re worried about the spread of disease,” Lehrer continued. “So far, our relationship with them is productive.”
Lehrer estimated it would cost $1.5 million to set up the pilot technology in Zomi.
“The most important thing is to prove we can get the systems in and operate them and that they can solve the problem,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of examples of them working elsewhere in the region, but to get them into Gaza, show that they can be installed and operated and provide answers, that’s when I believe will really be able to raise money.”
He said, “The international donor community is responding to the immediate humanitarian crisis of the people in Gaza with life-saving aid. However, they seem to be giving little thought to what happens to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people over the next few years while large-scale infrastructure is slowly rebuilt. Jumpstarting Hope in Gaza is introducing rapidly deployable decentralized technologies that offer both immediate solutions for water, energy, and sanitation and serve as medium-term sustainable solutions for the next few years.”
“Our approach has always been, let’s do less talking and more doing and start the ball rolling, and I feel the ball is starting to roll now,” he said.
