This Situation Stinks

Families in Gaza can rightly complain about being dumped on, and the unlucky Bedouin community of Umm Naser, located just 300 meters from the border with Israel, found themselves awash in a fecal flood yesterday.

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, America’s erstwhile Secretary of Defense, shit happens. It sure does. These villagers literally were caught without a paddle up a chest-deep brown-water creek. Rescuers gagged, and reporters witnessed angry survivors firing bullets at local politicians who came belatedly with photographers to pose beside the stinking mess. At least five people drowned, 35 were injured, and nearly 100 tin shacks were submerged in raw sewage. More bodies are expected to be retrieved, and emergency efforts to prevent further collapses on half a dozen cesspools underway. Now the fault-finding has begun in earnest.

The Palestinian Authority was forced to halt some sewage projects due to sanctions against Hamas, but the undersized treatment plant near Umm Naser was not one of these. True, the United Nations warned in 2004 that these sewage facilities were woefully inadequate and a spill was inevitable unless capacity was increased. Delays were caused by security concerns rather than equipment shortages, authorities insist. But Gaza City's mayor, Majid Abu Ramadan, said the makeshift sewage holding tank gave way on Tuesday morning because locals had dug soil away from an earthen embankment that shored it up and then hawked the dirt to building contractors for $70 a truckload. Subsequently, a sewage tsunami swept away the posessions of the dirt poor and desperate.

The aged sewage treatment plant, built by the World Bank near the frontier, stored incoming waste in seven holding basins. But the growing population now produces quadruple its capacity, so government officials stored the overflow in the nearby dunes, creating a foul lake of sewage covering nearly 110 acres. Bulldozers are reinforcing the remaining cesspools and Mekorot,Israel's national water company, is providing a couple of high-powered pumps. The choking odor drifts over the border. Smells rather like Katrina-- a predicted tragedy which ineptitude worsened.