GAZA: It was on a Wednesday that Nabhan Habboush finally decided to take the law into his own hands. Within hours a crane was outside his front door, driving an industrial-sized drill through the neatly tiled pavement.
Slowly at first, a crowd of curious neighbours gathered to watch, hoping the drill would strike what amounts to liquid gold in Gaza these days — water.
“I just decided enough was enough. I had to do something,” said Habboush, a 60-year-old grandfather, sitting outside in his white jalabaya, a long shirt, watching the men drill down.
“Water is a human right, it’s life. But we don’t have any, so what can we do? We have to have water.”
The retired Palestinian government worker had been weighing radical action since Hamas took power in March, prompting Israel and the United States to impose sanctions after the militant Islamic group refused to recognise the Jewish state and disarm.
The boycott left Hamas’s government with next to no income, unable to pay salaries to 165,000 state employees and limited in its ability to provide basic services, like water.
But it wasn’t until Israel bombed Gaza’s only power station late last month, part of an operation to try to rescue an Israeli soldier abducted by Palestinian militants, including members of Hamas’s armed wing, that Habboush snapped.
Israeli air strikes have continued and the Gaza offensive has killed scores of Palestinians. Israel has also gone on the offensive in Lebanon after Hizbollah guerrillas captured two soldiers and killed eight in cross-border attacks.
The destruction of the power plant had a knock-on effect on water pumps, which rely on electricity. That meant roof-top water tanks couldn’t be refilled, leaving Gaza’s 1.4 million Palestinians with taps running dry.
“We couldn’t wash, we couldn’t clean our clothes, everyone stank,” said Habboush, a father of 11 children and the head of an extended family that numbers around 400, all of whom live in houses on one block of a downtown Gaza street.
“We only had about two hours of water every four or five days,” he explained.
And that was only when he could get his hands on the scarce fuel needed to run a generator.
Once he’d made up his mind, Habboush, who spent more than 40 years working for
the Gaza water authority,
knew exactly who to call. By 7 a.m. the next morning, the crane had arrived and a group of 10 men were preparing to get to work.
After breaking through the pavement tiles, they drove the 30-cm-wide drill down 35 metres (115 ft) until they hit the water table beneath. It took more than nine hours, and the expectant crowd stayed to watch it all.—Reuters