In an enigmatic story from the New Testament, Jesus meets a woman at a well in Samaria. It’s midday, it’s hot, and he asks her for a drink of water. Then he tells her that he can offer her something much better: the water of eternal life, after which she will never thirst again. She is sceptical, they debate, but she does indeed receive some insight that transforms her life and sends her away rejoicing.

The story touches on the relationship between material reality and the meaning that lies beneath. There is an unseen quality that flows through human societies, purifying and renewing them, like crystal waters that flow underground and then emerge from a well. It has many names – mercy, compassion, wisdom, truth, love – and although it is not mentioned much in public administration, we know when it is absent.

The way we use water reflects the spiritual health of a society. A nation that fouls its rivers and coastlines, as Britain does, must be sick in heart and mind. And imbalances in power distort its flow. In Wales, one of the great symbols of the unequal relationship with England is the flooding of the Tryweryn valley to create a reservoir for an English city. In the Middle East, the fight is over underground aquifers.

Samaria – home also of the Good Samaritan – is now part of the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. Rain that falls here drains into an aquifer which extends into Israel, and it is contested, as the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine describes. Israeli settlers and soldiers have destroyed wells, tanks and pipelines, disrupting agriculture and driving Palestinians off the land. The situation is even more acute in Gaza, where the infrastructure to distribute water has been destroyed by the war.

About 60% of water here comes from boreholes sunk into the Gaza Coastal Aquifer, which has its own problems. Over-extraction has sucked in seawater, and contamination with sewage and agricultural runoff makes it unfit to drink. The remaining water comes from desalination plants (the Sameer Project is fundraising for one) or is piped in from Israel. The UN reported on 25 May that 74% of households were travelling to over 2000 collection points for their supplies, from which 24,000 cubic metres per day was distributed by 54 partners. It is an unsatisfactory arrangement with devastating impacts on public health.

A story from one corner of Gaza shows how ordinary people are affected. Khaled, one of a team of volunteers who manage the affairs of a community of 42 families, explains how they used to depend on a set of communal taps linked to a borehole, until a breakdown in community relations upended their lives.

“Our supply was always shared with many families. It would stop for periods, especially when demand was high or there were technical issues, so people had to store what they could, and the pressure was often low too. The quality was also not always reliable, so for drinking we had to be careful. But despite these challenges, it was something we had adapted to.”

Over time though, the neighbouring community who had control over the water supply began to restrict its use, eventually cutting them off altogether.

“It wasn’t driven by hostility, but by fear and shortage. Each group was trying to protect their own families with what little was available. But for us, it meant losing a vital part of daily life almost overnight.”

It was a shock and the community had to adjust quickly. For washing, there was the sea. For drinking though, they had to walk long distances with containers to reach distribution points.

“It was tiring and difficult, especially for children and older people. We had to ration carefully, using only what was necessary for drinking and cooking. People had to reduce personal washing to the minimum. Bathing became rare, clothes and bedding could not be cleaned properly, and shared living spaces became harder to keep sanitary.”

When people cannot wash their hands regularly, clean wounds, or maintain basic hygiene, infections move quickly, especially among children. Those who were already weak became more vulnerable, and recovery took longer. Dehydration was another problem, leaving people weak and struggling to cope with heat.

But the more insidious effect was on morale. Not being able to wash or put on clean clothes strikes at human dignity, and the disruption to daily routines put a strain on a community already living in dangerous conditions and dealing with terrible loss. It destabilized the delicate balance of human relations, showing up for instance as risk-taking, as people ventured into dangerous areas looking for water. At other times, the response was an uneasy silence born of fatigue and depression.

“The lack of water was not just an inconvenience. It affected the whole system of well-being. Daily life became organised around finding and conserving water, which affected everything else we were trying to do.”

The only way out was to sink their own borehole. This meant finding a suitable site amongst the rubble and then hiring equipment. This was not easy, as the blockade restricts the imports of spare parts, consumables and lubricants. Khaled and his team had to raise thousands of dollars from their international network of supporters and also to make painful economies at home. During the anxious week it took to prepare, everyone had to miss meals, even the children.

Finally one morning they had a borehole reaching down tens of metres into the aquifer, and it was time to attach the pump, powered by a generator. A crowd gathered to watch the big moment.

It was a crushing blow when the generator overheated and exploded. Children cried with the shock, echoing the dismay and disbelief of the adults. “It was like Allah had forsaken us,” said Khaled. “We starved ourselves to get that borehole, but we went from one bad situation to another.”

Now, not only did they still have no water supply, but they had lost their main source of electrical power, which they depended on for charging phones and computers. It was a glimpse into the abyss. But they carried on. An engineer was called and a second round of fundraising began, even more fraught with anxiety.

“I was afraid that if we couldn’t repair the generator quickly, the community would go on the rampage and families would start turning on each other,” said Khaled, voicing the ever-present fear that at some point the struggle to survive in the face of insuperable odds will become too much, that the bonds of community have their limit.

Four days later, though, it was done. To general rejoicing, water gushed out of a pipe into the waiting buckets and containers. Normality had returned, such as it was. They still try to find other sources for drinking water, but they can at least wash and clean with it, and the fact of having their own supply brings back a confidence that had been severely tested.

The situation across Gaza remains dire, and the only hope for restoring proper water supplies is wholesale reconstruction, which depends in turn on a stalled peace process. It can feel like the human divisions run deeper than the aquifers.

But the two people at the well in Samaria were also speaking across a divide. Jews and Samaritans were neighbours who shared religious roots but worshipped at rival sites and kept apart from each other, and the woman appears to have been a social outcast into the bargain. Nevertheless, they opened up a channel for human connection, through which joy and hope could flow. It is always possible.

The Sameer Project is fundraising for a desalination plant in Gaza. Please support them here.