No human being should have to endure what the people of Gaza are being put through. The desperation and sense of sheer helplessness is even worse for those with disabilities and the sick.
Tortured by the excruciating buzzing of drones, a youth with autism dies by suicide to escape the agony in his head.
There is no morphine for the amputation for a four-year-old girl whose legs were crushed beyond salvaging – and no access to much needed reconstructive surgeries and therapy that might give her some hope of recovering.
Deaf people are not spared the sight of mangled bodies.
Blind people are not spared the smell of rotting death.
My 27-year-old-son, Adham, has cerebral palsy. As a parent, it has been heart-wrenching to see the toll that this conflict has taken on him. When bombs exploded, he became stone-like, unable to move, eat or sleep, and sometimes, unable to breathe.
For my 59-year-old body, my grown son is heavy to carry but I do it to keep him safe.
My wife and I had to discuss how to sleep because Adham cannot move alone. Many families distribute themselves into different corners of their homes, so that should a bomb hit, hopefully someone will survive. Other families do not scatter themselves, choosing instead to live together and die together. We are one of them.
The situation of people with disabilities in Gaza is beyond catastrophic. When evacuation orders were issued in the North, first in October 2023, many could not flee – and their families refused to leave them behind. Those who could escape were packed like luggage into cars, carts or mini buses. Assistive devices, like wheelchairs, canes, crutches and medical equipment often had to be left behind. Hearing aids, eyeglasses, adaptive toilet seats and incontinence pads were destroyed or lost.
In tents, there is little or no space to move around. Toilets are inaccessible and shared by hundreds of people. For older people and women with disabilities, in particular, there is no privacy to relieve themselves or bathe with dignity, assuming they find enough water to spare to wash their bodies. As a result, many people have skin infections.
Chronic illnesses and injuries, including traumatic amputations, are not being treated with medications, therapy or rehabilitation. The trauma of what is happening to people with disabilities, heightens their sense of being a burden and despair.
In the beginning, people with disabilities were receiving limited humanitarian aid, like food parcels, but accessing them requires transportation and fighting desperate crowds. Imagine the chaos of 2,000 people scrambling over the same food parcel. People with disabilities end up relying on others to collect their share, maybe a father, brother or sister – if they haven’t been killed already.
For people with disabilities with dietary needs, there is no liquid food or disability-inclusive feeding equipment, like feeding tubes or adaptive utensils.
Most assistive devices are not being included in the minimal humanitarian aid coming into Gaza. The Israelis have declared them dangerous, so called “dual use” items that could be used for military purposes. Without wheelchairs, canes, walkers, splints and prosthetics, people with disabilities are struggling to survive, left isolated, with no independence or sense of autonomy or dignity. The psychological torture of feeling like a burden is unbearable and degrading.
My family has managed to escape from Gaza to Egypt. After 200 days in hell, with Adham’s well-being to prioritise, we decided to leave. Initially, I wanted to stay behind to continue my work with people with disabilities, but my wife and son refused to go without me.
We raised $15,000 for the three of us to cross the border, myself Adham and my wife. It took two months to coordinate – 60 days not knowing if we would be granted exit, or survive the journey.
We are safe now but being out of Gaza is not easy. When I see the full scale of the war on news coverage, l feel, smell and hear the horror, as if I was still there, leaving me with a nausea I cannot shake.
What is happening is a genocide.
Gaza is being wiped out. Historical buildings, hundreds of years old, have been decimated. Israel’s government has obliterated our past and is desecrating our present. There are hardly any homes left standing. There are no water pipes or sanitation services. There are no fully functioning or sufficiently equipped schools or hospitals. And what about people with disabilities who have nowhere to go, no one to help them?
We don’t know what to do, except to let the world know, so that people everywhere across the globe, each nation and each state can assess for themselves how complicit they are in this unprecedented human-made humanitarian disaster, being carried out mostly with American bombs and with Western help.
Jamal al Rozzi is Executive Director, National Rehabilitation Society in the Gaza Strip.
