"Taking our water is not like taking a toy. Water is life, they cannot play with our lives like this," says Maher Najjar, deputy general director of the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU) of the recent Israeli threat to cut electricity, water and infrastructure services to the occupied Gaza Strip.

"Everything will be affected: drinking and washing water, sewage and sanitation, hospitals, schools and children," says Ahmed al-Amrain, head of power information at the Palestinian Energy and National Resources Authority (PENRA).

(some days ago...)

A low rumble mutes the car honks and the cries of children playing on the lane outside our house in Deir al Balah, central Gaza. The vaguely furnace-like sound distinguishes itself as an Israeli warplane flying over our skies, poisoning the mid-morning tranquility.

I'd been lost in typing my thoughts, almost oblivious to my surroundings: the Gaza Strip, where at any moment such a warplane's roar erupts and where likewise any moment the deafening thud of its bomb vibrates through towns and cities and farmland.

But the rumble of the circling Israeli warplane snaps me back into reality, making the trivial all the more trivial, and the possible all the more possible.

(last night)