Cesspool Collapses Killing Gazans

A cesspool near Umm Naser in Gaza collapsed, killing at least six people and displaced thousands more. The structure had been cited previously as being unstable and needed to be replaced. The Palestinians have known for at least two years that they needed to take action to prevent this very event from occurring.

A 2004 United Nations report warned that the sewage facility was at its maximum capacity and flooding was inevitable unless a new waste treatment plant was constructed. It said that even without overflowing, the effluent lake posed a serious health hazard, providing a breeding ground for mosquitoes and waterborne diseases.

Stuart Shepard, of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the wave of waste released Tuesday sent the health risks even higher.

"It is an extremely serious situation," he said.

Shepard said that since the report was published, international funding for a new plant had been secured but construction had not been able to go ahead because of the high security risks in the area.

The money was even made available to fix it, and yet it mysteriously vanished. The Palestinians blame Israel for the inaction, yet the security situation was such precisely because Hamas and Fatah decided to spend its energies fighting a terror war against Israel instead of focusing on Palestinian infrastructure and development.

Gazans are mobbing the Palestinian government offices - as they should. Their so-called elected leaders have failed them for generations and it is coming back to hurt them in every way conceivable.

Hamas can wail all it wants about how it was the Zionists or the US to blame for the cesspool collapsing and causing such damage, but the fact is that it was responsible for the upkeep and it chose to kill Israelis than fund basic infrastructure. The same goes for Fatah before that.

Neither could care less about basic infrastructure. Both have more interest in building rocket factories, bomb factories, and tunnels to smuggle stuff into Gaza than make sure that sewage is properly treated.

It's also interesting that they want to blame the Israelis or US for the failure to get something done about this, but what about the Palestinians themselves making and spending the money to build the damned treatment facility themselves?

The Palestinians, particularly Hamas, are doing everything imagineable to alienate the Palestinians from the rest of the world.

The Israeli Army reports that they were not asked by the Palestinians to provide assistance in Gaza, but Peretz ordered the Israeli military to provide assistance.

Oh, and all those talks about a Palestinian unity government - well the Palestinian Interior Minister's convoy came under fire.


LGF has more.