On Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza Strip massacred some 1,200 people in southern Israel and as the Israeli military was gearing up for what was sure to be a major war in the coastal enclave, a group of five Arava Institute for Environmental Studies researchers and staff decided to hold their regularly scheduled Zoom call with their four partners in Gaza from the Palestinian nonprofit Damour for Community Development. 

It was not an easy meeting, but the longtime partners knew that they would have to get to work immediately in order to provide the long-term humanitarian aid in the form of sustainable shelter and infrastructure that would almost certainly be needed in Gaza. So they persisted, the Arava Institute executive director, Tareq Abu Hamed, told eJewishPhilanthropy.

“In the first few months we concentrated on empathy, solidarity,” said Abu Hamed. “But then we understood we needed to do something with our Gazan partners. Everyone is talking about the day after but the people in Gaza have a lot of needs right now. Rebuilding Gaza will take years, and people will continue living in tents for years without any kind of hygiene or sanitation infrastructure.”

Several months ago, the two partner organizations received permission to build and maintain off-grid shelters for over 20,000 people through their “Jumpstarting Hope in Gaza” project. With the support of international organizations, they are beginning to establish water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure in refugee camps in Gaza. The pilot shelters are already operating in four locations with two shelters in Al-Mawasi, one in Hamad and one in Dir Albalah. Each family is supplied with its own tent within the fenced-off area, where there are communal kitchens and other common services, Abu Hamed said. 

The Palestinian partners are former students at the Arava Institute and received training for the set-up and maintenance of the systems during their studies, he added, and they are always in touch with partners at the Arava Institute for any support needed.

In one of the shelters in Gaza, the communal kitchen was named in memory of Canadian-Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver who was murdered by Hamas terrorist in her home on Kibbutz Be’eri in the Oct. 7 attacks. One of the partners in the project was friends with Silver and has placed her photo prominently in the kitchen.

“So you see the photo of an Israeli, in Gaza, publicly displayed. That is the type of people we work with,” said Abu Hamed. “Everyone who goes into these shelters is vetted by our Palestinian partners.”

The plan is for these off-grid, but high-tech shelters to integrate WASH and energy solutions to ensure long-term sustainability and independence for displaced communities. 

“Our goal with our Palestinian partners is to convert these shelters into sustainable green shelters to provide them with solar energy — solar energy to desalinate water, solar energy to treat wastewater, solar energy to produce electricity, bio-digesters to convert the organic waste into fuel and also to replace these tents with caravans,” he said. “They are off-grid technologies, but they are not low-tech, they are high-tech. They run on solar energy, treat wastewater and produce drinking water.”

But the organization has run into difficulties getting the necessary permission from the Israeli military to bring in the equipment. They were able to receive permits from the military to send in water bladders for water storage and are now waiting for the approvals for the solar energy and desalination systems. At the moment the situation does not look optimistic, Abu Hamed said. 

Realistically, he said, they know it will all take a lot of time but still believe that once the war is over they will be allowed to send in the necessary technologies.

Though getting the permission from the Israeli side is challenging, Abu Hamed said that when they file a request with Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, which is responsible for overseeing the transfer of humanitarian aid into Gaza, they have been open to considering the requests, rather than immediately refusing them outright. Abu Hamed noted that his group received the permissions for the water bladders within a week and was also able to quickly receive approvals to send in “dignity kits” for women, as well as clothes, tents and blankets in preparation for the winter, he said.

“Everything is valuable in Gaza. Everything that can help pass this winter will be very, very helpful. We are talking mainly about children and women. That’s why we actually focus also on that, on dignity, kids and health tools,” he said.

Even before Oct. 7, UNICEF had declared that 96% of Gaza’s freshwater sources were unsuitable for drinking water due to contamination and high salinity levels, noting that there was a “critical shortage” of potable water in the Strip. Since then, the only source of drinking water has come from outside Gaza with the assistance of international aid organizations. With “Jumpstarting Hope in Gaza,” atmospheric drinking water generators and off-grid desalination plants can secure local sources of potable water, said Abu Hamed.

Sanitation services are also nearing total collapse in Gaza with the halt of fuel supplies for wastewater treatment plants, scarce water and destroyed networks, according to the Arava Institute. Lack of sanitation threatens widespread outbreak of deadly water-borne diseases like cholera, typhoid, diarrhea, and tuberculosis. Treating sewage at the source with plug-and-play wastewater treatment systems can provide immediate sanitation coverage and offset centralized network failures, the organization said.

The systems are stand-alone and decentralized and don’t need any additional infrastructure, Abu Hamed explained. They are also modular and can be connected to treat greater amounts of wastewater. “Our Gaza partners are ready. They even had people dig wells,” he said. “And there is water in the wells, but they can’t drink it because it is saline. They are waiting for these desalination technologies.”  

Their work builds on the experience they have had in the past working on similar projects in Gaza, said Abu Hamed.

The “Jumpstarting Hope in Gaza,” which works with a coalition of civil society organizations from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Gaza and some U.S. universities, was introduced at COP29 and has garnered the involvement of numerous international organizations, including the Multifaith Alliance, SunBox, SmartAid and Gigawatt Impact.

Their success in these efforts is not just the fact of sending in the technologies, he said, but the fact that they as an Israeli organization have been able to maintain the channel of communication open with their Palestinian partners even in this “horrible time.”

“The Gazans live under horrible conditions, but yet they still want to talk to the Israelis. They see death every day, but they still want to work with the Israelis. And that is because of the trust [that we have built with our partners],” he said. “The Arava Institute believes that nature knows no borders and we try to advance cross-border environmental cooperation in the face of the political conflict… We strongly believe that the environment, climate and science is a great diplomacy tool to bring people together… Dialogue is not a weakness, it gives you the tools to understand, to build understanding of the other. We disagree, but we understand and that’s how we build trust.”

They are now also working with Duke University in the U.S. to build a children’s village in northern Gaza for the tens of thousands of children who were orphaned during the war, and the thousands who are now disabled, Abu Hamed said. They are in the very final stages of receiving permission to move forward with the project from the relevant Israeli authorities.  

“The Israeli government is looking enthusiastically at this project,” he said.

The cost for the sustainable green shelters is approximately $1000 per person for the caravan and the water, electricity and wastewater treatment, and they have been supported in the endeavor by foundations and private donors. However, building the village will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and they are in touch with major international organizations and some countries who are interested in taking the lead on the project, he said.

“Horrible things happened to both sides. We cannot take peace as granted, we cannot take democracy as granted, we cannot take human rights as granted. We have to fight and work hard for these things,” Abu Hamed said. “That’s what we do. Despite these horrible things, we believe that peace is the only way forward. That’s the only sustainable way to have prosperity in this region.”