When the Israeli military ordered evacuations in part of the northern Gaza Strip about a year ago, Zuhair Abu Odeh rushed out with his 9-year-old daughter, who uses a wheelchair, in search of a safer place. In his haste, he ran her chair into a crack in a road, jamming a wheel and forcing them to abandon it. Abu Odeh and his sons carried his daughter, Lara, on their backs for 4 1/2 hours until they reached Nuseirat, 9 miles to the south.
“We’re living through impossible times,” Abu Odeh, 46, said in a phone interview from a makeshift shelter in Khan Yunis, where the family has since fled.
The war has forced most of Gaza’s roughly 2 million residents from their homes, an experience defined by daily struggles to find food, water, clean bathrooms and power. But it has been particularly punishing for people with disabilities and their families.
The suffering of disabled people — the blind, deaf, physically and cognitively impaired — has been compounded by steep shortages in devices to aid them, like wheelchairs and hearing aids, and in damage to roads, sidewalks and homes with accessible features.
Until Abu Odeh found Lara a new wheelchair in February, he and his children carried her to the market, the hospital and the beach. While the chair has brought some relief, it has still been difficult to push through dirt paths in the makeshift camps set up for people seeking shelter.
“We’re barely holding on,” Abu Odeh said. “We can’t tolerate this agony anymore.”
Lara was originally diagnosed with cerebral palsy, but an orthopaedist said he believed that was wrong and suggested spinal surgery could give her the ability to walk.
Her parents, who lived in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, spent days preparing paperwork and working connections to send her to the Israeli-occupied West Bank for surgery. But since the October 7 Hamas-led attack that ignited the war in Gaza, they have made no progress because of Israeli restrictions on leaving Gaza.
“I don’t need food or any other kind of assistance,” said Manal Abu Odeh, Lara’s mother. “What I need is to bring Lara to Ramallah,” the West Bank city where hospitals have resources well beyond Gaza’s broken health care system.
Before the war, 56,000 people in Gaza were registered as living with disabilities, with nearly half suffering from a physical impairment, according to the Palestinian Authority. The United Nations said 21 per cent of households in Gaza reported at least one family member having a disability before the October 7 attack. While no new estimate has been released, experts believe the conflict between Israel and Hamas has permanently disabled thousands more.
Doctors have amputated people’s limbs throughout Gaza. At the end of last year, Unicef said medical workers and UN staff members reported that around 1,000 children had lost one or more of their limbs; in September, the World Health Organization reported that more than 22,500 had suffered “life-changing” injuries, requiring rehabilitation “now and for years to come.”
Disabled people, humanitarian officials said, were some of the most neglected in the war. “People with disabilities in Gaza are at the highest risk, but they’ve been forgotten far too often,” said Muhannad Alazzeh, 54, a member of the UN committee on the rights of people with disabilities.
In 2012, Israel ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which requires member states to take “all necessary measures” to ensure that people with disabilities are protected, including in armed conflicts. Alazzeh said Israel was not living up to its obligations to move disabled people from the line of fire, ensure the delivery of sufficient equipment and specialised medications, and help injured people leave Gaza.
In a statement, COGAT, the arm of the Israeli defence ministry that coordinates the entry of aid into Gaza, said it has permitted the entry of more than 28,000 tonnes of medical supplies, including medicine, wheelchairs and crutches.
It also pointed to Israel’s recent decision to allow some patients and escorts to travel through Israeli territory to access medical treatment abroad. In one of the most recent cases in November, Israel allowed more than 200 patients and their escorts to exit Gaza. - The New York Times
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
