Part II: Denial of Access to Services The Gaza Strip Although Israel as the Occupying Power is ultimately responsible for service provision in the Gaza Strip, services are currently provided through a division of labor between the Hamas government in Gaza and the PA government in Ramallah.212 However, discriminatory Israeli energy and water provision policies combined with the 10-year-long closure and the brutal targeting of service infrastructure in the three wars on Gaza has created increasingly desperate living conditions in the Strip. As illustrated in the Natural Gas section of this paper, the lack of electricity and power outages have severely hampered the delivery of basic services. Inadequate electricity has meant that over 70 percent of households in Gaza are only supplied with piped water six to eight hours at one time every two to four days, and water pumps sometimes lack sufficient energy levels to operate.213 The coastal aquifer from which Gaza sources its fresh water is rapidly depleting and has been contaminated by seawater and sewage, meaning that 90 percent of piped water is not potable. This has forced people in Gaza to rely on desalinated water brought in trucks for drinking and cooking, which is more expensive and still not of adequate quality.214 212 Are Hovdenak, The Public Services under Hamas in Gaza: Islamic Revolution or Crisis Management?, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), March 2010, 5, available at: http://file.prio.no/Publication_ files/Prio/The_Public_Services_under_Hamas_in_Gaza.pdf 213 OCHA, Impact of Gaza’s Electricity Crisis, supra note 106. 214 World Bank, “Water Situation Alarming in Gaza,” 22 November 2016, available at: http://www. worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/11/22/water-situation-alarming-in-gaza [accessed 22 August 2017]. 59