[Quality of water and access to it in the Occupied Palestinian Territory]

ABSTRACT

We investigated access to and quality of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. As regards access, 89.2% of Palestinian families live in households connected to the public water network 84.1% in the West Bank and 99.3% in the Gaza Strip. In the north and south West Bank, 2.3% of households depend on buying water from tanks but this is not available in the mid-West Bank and Gaza Strip. Rain-fed cisterns are used in 13% of households in the West Bank and 0.2% in the Gaza Strip. Overall, 63% of households considered the water quality good, 88.0% in the West Bank and 13.3% in the Gaza Strip. There was a significant relationship between water-related diseases and water quality the spread of such diseases was greater in the Gaza Strip