19/08/2026
🚨URGENT HUMANITARIAN APPEAL🚨
*To the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)*
Subject: Urgent Intervention Required to Provide Oils for the Operation of Water Well Generators in Beit Lahia Municipality
Beit Lahia Municipality issues this urgent humanitarian appeal to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), calling for immediate and responsible intervention to provide the oils required to operate the generators powering the municipality’s water wells, before the wells stop functioning and the city faces a severe water crisis that threatens the lives of its residents.
While the necessary oils are being provided to operate water-well generators in other municipalities and areas, Beit Lahia Municipality continues to face a critical shortage of these essential supplies, despite repeated appeals and the urgent humanitarian need.
The justification that the ICRC is unable to deliver the supplies due to restrictions on access to the city cannot be accepted as an adequate response in the face of a situation that directly threatens the population’s access to water. Water is not a commodity that can be postponed; it is a fundamental human necessity and a prerequisite for life. Humanitarian organizations must explore every possible means to ensure that vital assistance reaches civilians, rather than allowing logistical constraints to become a reason for withholding or delaying life-saving support.
Continued failure to provide the required oils will inevitably lead to the shutdown of water-well generators and, consequently, the interruption of water pumping to neighborhoods and displacement shelters. This would expose tens of thousands of residents to severe water shortages and further deepen the humanitarian crisis already affecting the city.
Furthermore, depriving the residents of Beit Lahia of basic necessities, particularly access to water, may force them to leave the city in search of the minimum conditions necessary for survival. This would, in practice, contribute to the depopulation and forced displacement of the city’s residents.
Accordingly, Beit Lahia Municipality urgently calls upon the ICRC to:
• Immediately and urgently intervene to provide the oils required to operate the generators of the water wells.
• Ensure that these essential supplies reach the water wells and water facilities in the city without delay.
• Refrain from treating access restrictions as a justification for stopping or delaying humanitarian assistance to the population.
• Fulfill its humanitarian responsibility to ensure the continuity of essential water services for civilians.
Beit Lahia Municipality emphasizes that continued failure to provide these essential supplies, despite the known severity of the water situation in the city, would carry serious humanitarian and ethical implications for the ICRC, particularly if water wells are forced to stop operating due to the lack of oils.
We therefore call upon the International Committee of the Red Cross to act NOW — before the water wells stop operating, not after it is too late.
Water is a right to life… ensuring access to it is a humanitarian responsibility that cannot be postponed.
Beit Lahia Municipality
International Committee of the Red Cross
