Nitrates significantly impact human health and the environment. Drinking water and vegetables are considered the main sources of exposure to exogenous nitrates for humans. This study aimed to estimate and assess the health hazards from nitrate contamination present in drinking water and vegetables for infants in the north of the Gaza Strip. A total of 252 samples were collected from groundwater and drinking water, and 15 vegetable samples were analyzed with a spectrophotometer. In addition, an ELISA kit was used to determine methemoglobin in 87 infant blood samples. According to the findings of this study, the nitrate concentration in groundwater was in the range from 58.3 mg/L to 178.4 mg/L. Meanwhile, the nitrate levels in drinking water were found to be between 10 and 17 mg/L. As for vegetables, carrots (237.20 ± 53.23 mg kg⁻¹), potatoes (246.80 ± 81.42 mg kg⁻¹), and zucchini (275.86 ± 58.87 mg kg⁻¹) had varying nitrate concentrations. Lastly, the study revealed that methemoglobinemia was present in 32.2% of infant samples in the study area. This study concluded that 97% of groundwater in desalination plants exceeded WHO guidelines (>50 mg/L), and the values of nitrates in drinking water showed the existence of nitrate contamination. Among vegetables, zucchini has the highest nitrate content. Exposure to drinking water and vegetables contaminated with nitrate increased the percentage of methemoglobin levels in infants.

The presented work analyzes the potential impacts of the temperature, precipitation changes and water salinity on agricultural water demand. The study was carried out on five representative orchard crops (olive, palm, grapes, citrus and guava) that cover around 83% of the orchard farms in Gaza Strip. To achieve this goal, CropWat modeling software version 8.0 is used to calculate the reference evapotranspiration rate and crop water requirement under different temperature and precipitation scenarios. Furthermore, a survey was conducted to evaluate the farmers' current irrigation practices and the impact of water salinity on leaching requirements and production yield. The increased temperatures by 1 or 2 °C caused an increase of the annual average evapotranspiration by 45 and 91 mm relative to the current climate condition and leading to increase of irrigation requirements by 3.28 and 6.68%, respectively. Leaching requirements do not exceed 15% for electrical conductivity (EC) value less than 2 dS/m, while it begins to increase for the EC value between 3 and 4 dS/m and account for 114, 89 and 36% for grape, citrus and guava. Generally, the impact of salinity increase on irrigation requirements is much higher than the impact of evapotranspiration increase due to the temperature increase by 2 °C and 10% precipitation reduction.

Al-Shifa medical complex is one of the most famous medical complex in the Gaza Strip. Since 1946 it was expanded many times, nowadays, the total clinical capacity has 564 beds on an area of 42,000 m². The main aim of the current research is to characterize the medical wastewater in the Gaza Strip. Currently, wastewater from hospitals is discharged to the public network then to overloaded central wastewater treatment plants, where partially treated effluent is infiltrate to the groundwater and the majority discharged to the sea. Composite samples from different sectors of the complex are collected every two hours for 24 hours and analyzed for physical and chemical characteristics. The pH from different medical sectors showed an acceptable range for disposal to the public network, while the salinity was extremely high and differs from sector to another. The Surgery department recorded the highest wastewater pollution i.e. TSS, BOD, and COD accounted for 3008, 1150, and 5350 mg/L, respectively, while the highest TKN (117 mg/L) was from the surgery operation room. Heavy metals such as Cd, Zn, and Pb in the medical wastewater from Al-Shifa medical complex do not constitute a threat to public wastewater sewerage system, mostly below the detection limits. It is highly recommended to further investigate the causes of strong pollution from both the surgery department and surgery room to propose pretreatment before disposal to the public network. Microbiology and infectious diseases and radioactive pollution should be considered in future planned research to gain comprehensive medical waste characteristics in the Gaza Strip. Keywords: Wastewater; Heavy Metals; Hospital; Effluent

This study aims to assess the potential of urban agriculture to secure daily needs during the armed conflicts, in addition to assess the contribution of urban agriculture in alleviating poverty level and unemployment rate for its practitioners. A combination of both quantitative and qualitative research methods was employed in this study. In the quantitative design, 129 randomly selected urban farmers from the area of the survey completed the self-administered close-ended questionnaires, whereas the statistical analysis presents the socio-demographic, economic, and other aspects of the households. The qualitative data collection included interviews with six governmental and nongovernmental officials.The results show that 89.2 percent of the urban agriculture practitioners are feeling food security. However, a small percentage of the households who practice urban agriculture are still experiencing difficulties with food security. In the meantime, the armed conflict forced most of the urban farmers to evacuate their homes or lands; thus, only 34.9 percent of urban farmers managed to gain food during the 2014 armed conflict.In a nutshell, urban agriculture significantly and positively contributes to alleviating household food insecurity in the study area. However, its role was very limited during the 2014 armed conflict.