By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
The pollution did not stop at the fence. That is the blunt finding now facing Israeli water officials, who say an exceptional algae bloom has crippled much of the country's desalination capacity, leaving the country bracing for weeks of shortages.
Scientists tracing the bloom point to a grim source: the destruction of Gaza's wastewater treatment plants during the war. With five desalination plants shut down for days, the crisis has now boomeranged back on Israel itself.
"Pollution does not recognise political borders," the Zalul Environmental Association, an Israeli NGO focused on protecting the country's seas and shores, said in a statement. "The discharge of untreated sewage from the Gaza Strip into the sea is contributing to the worsening crisis affecting the Israeli desalination facilities. The wastewater contains nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed microalgae and cyanobacteria and may intensify their blooms."
The irony is heavy. Gaza itself remains in the grip of a far more severe and prolonged water and sanitation crisis, one that has left its own population without reliable access to clean water throughout the war. Now the consequences of that broken infrastructure are washing up on Israeli shores, forcing a reckoning that pollution, unlike people, needs no checkpoint to cross a border.
No timeline has been given for when Israel's desalination capacity might be restored, and the scale of Gaza's own infrastructure collapse suggests the underlying problem — a coastline absorbing sewage from a shattered water system — will not resolve itself quickly, whatever the ceasefire status.
FILED FROM SOMEWHERE WITH BAD COFFEE -
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."