Israel is doubling the amount of water it provides to Gaza Strip. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Israeli officials say they are doubling the amount of water the Jewish state provides to the Gaza Strip, despite ongoing threats from the Gaza-based Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) chief Major General Yoav Mordechai said that Israel would increase water supplies from 1.3 to 2.6 billion gallons to help ease the ongoing water crisis in Gaza.

A recent report by the Israeli non-governmental organization B’Tselem said that more than 90 percent of Gaza’s water is un-potable due to decades of over-pumping of Gaza’s coastal aquifer, the territory’s main water source, leading to contamination from seawater and saline groundwater as well as a lack of wastewater treatment.

Mordechai added that he hopes Hamas “would not steal water from civilians as they steal construction materials intended for the reconstruction of houses,” the Associated Press reported.

The news concerning Gaza’s water supply comes after a recent false report repeated by several news outlets, including Al-Jazeera and Agence France Presse (AFP), that Israel purposely opened dams in southern Israel and flooded parts of Gaza. No such dams exist in southern Israel. Al-Jazeera later retracted and apologized for the false reporting.

Hamas and other Gaza-based terror groups such as Islamic Jihad regularly use building materials sent from Israel, such as concrete, for the construction of tunnels used to launch attacks inside of Israel.