Gazans With Disabilities Face ‘Impossible Times’ of Chaos and War

When the Israeli military ordered evacuations in part of northern Gaza 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. Mr. Abu Odeh and his sons carried his daughter, Lara, on their backs for four and a half hours until they reached Nuseirat, nine miles to the south.

“We’re living through impossible times,” Mr. Abu Odeh, 46, said in a phone interview from a makeshift shelter in Khan Younis, where the family has since fled.

The war has forced most of Gaza’s roughly two 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 handicapped 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 Mr. 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,” said Mr. Abu Odeh. “We can’t tolerate this agony anymore.”

Lara was originally diagnosed with cerebral palsy, but an orthopedist 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 Oct. 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 percent of households in Gaza reported at least one family member having a disability before the Oct. 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 U.N. 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.”

Handicapped 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 U.N. committee on the rights of people with disabilities.

In 2012, Israel ratified the U.N. 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. Mr. 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 specialized medications, and help injured people leave Gaza.

In a statement, COGAT, the arm of the Israeli defense ministry that coordinates the entry of aid into Gaza, said it has permitted the entry of more than 28,000 tons 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.

But thousands of other people in need of treatment have been unable to leave, including some suffering from life-threatening conditions. Sharaf al-Faqawi, the Gaza area manager for Humanity & Inclusion, an organization that supports handicapped people, said he and his colleagues have placed around 2,000 people on waiting lists for devices like wheelchairs, crutches and walkers.

“We often feel incapable of providing what people need,” Mr. Al-Faqawi said.

Constantly relocating has been exhausting. For blind people, it has at times felt impossible.

Doaa Jarad, 25, and her sister, both of whom have visual impairments, were sheltering on a stairwell in a school in Rafah when Israeli airstrikes suddenly pounded the area. Amid the chaos, she pleaded with people for help, but nobody came to their aid.

“Everyone was looking out for themselves,” said Ms. Jarad, who lived in the northern city of Beit Hanoun before the war. “We wanted to go down the stairs, but all the people on our floor were rushing down them.”

When everyone was gone, they tried to walk to a safer place while avoiding knocked-over tables and chairs, she said. The bombing eventually stopped, but it was one of the most harrowing moments for the Jarads over the past year.

Surrounded by the horror and destruction of war, even going to the bathroom has become a long and nauseating experience for displaced people.

Many disabled people struggle to get onto the toilet seat. Makeshift bathrooms, which have become common, often lack accessibility features like extra space for someone in a wheelchair to transfer to a toilet seat, or bars to help them balance.

Ali Jebril, 28, who is paralyzed from the waist down, said the stalls are often so narrow that he can barely fit with his wheelchair, if at all.

“It’s a nightmare,” said Mr. Jebril, who has been living in a tent in central Gaza. “Gaza wasn’t built for people like me before the war, but now it isn’t built at all for us.”

Mr. Jebril, originally from Gaza City, has been paralyzed since a neighbor drove his car into him when he was 6. Before the war, he was a top wheelchair basketball player and worked at an oceanside restaurant.

His wheelchair has gradually fallen into disrepair, with punctured tires and the seat’s frame coming undone. He often requires strangers’ help to move. But he said it can be frightening to ask for assistance. Israel has frequently targeted militants in civilian spaces, sometimes dropping bombs weighing hundreds of pounds to kill them.

“You can’t know if your neighbor is a safe person or not,” he said. “But what can I do?”

The hardest part, Mr. Jebril said, was thinking back to his life on the basketball court and at the restaurant in Gaza City.

“I had so much that I hoped for in life,” he said. “But now, I’m going from tent to tent and city to city. I’m living through a torturous struggle to survive.”