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The spokesperson of the Gaza-based anti-siege popular committee Rami Abdo has warned on Tuesday that the Israeli blockade on Gaza Strip caused a sharp decrease in drinking water, putting lives of the 1.5 million Gazans at risk. In a statement he issued in Gaza city and a copy of which was obtained by the PIC, Abdo asserted that almost 70% of the Palestinian families in the tiny Strip were receiving potable water once every five days as a result of the siege, warning that the Israeli sanctions on Gaza had also affected maintenance of water networks and treatment of waste water.

"Keeping up the pressure on Gaza and maintaining closure of its crossing points would lead to an inevitable environmental disaster as a result of contamination" Abdo stressed, explaining that efficiency of the water networks in the Strip had declined by more than 65%.

According to Abdo, around 150,000 liters of diesel were normally needed to operate deep water wells and sewerage system in the Strip, but, he disclosed, the Gaza water authority hadn't received a single liter of diesel from the Israeli occupation government during the month of April, adding that new deep wells were lacking chlorinating system due to Israel's refusal to allow chlorinating equipment and the needed materials coming into the Gaza Strip.

Speaking from the legal point of view, Abdo confirmed that article six of the basic charter of the International Criminal Court defined mass extermination as an act imposed on certain people that later on leads to complete or partial destruction of their lives.

Keeping the focus on the charter, Abdo cited article eight of the same that he explained, defined war crimes as acts that lead to starving people and denying them relief items.

Supporting Abdo's claims, Yousef Al-Ghareez, the head of the environment quality authority in Gaza, warned, in two separate letters he sent to executive director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), and to the regional director of the same program Habib Al-Habr, that environmental conditions in Gaza Strip were worsening further because of the blockade.

He also invited the two UN officials to visit Gaza Strip so as to see for themselves the volume of human tragedy the siege had created in the densely populated Strip, and for both of them to realize also that life in the Strip had become impossible.