Since Israel\u2019s complete siege on Gaza began, Hazem Saeed Al-Naizi, the director of an orphanage in Gaza City, had been gripped with fear, worried about when food, water and other basic necessities might run out for the dozens of children and young people in his care, most of whom are living with disabilities. <\/p>\n
When a strike hit a mosque near the Mabarat Al-Rahma orphanage on October 27, blowing out windows, scattering the building with debris, igniting a fire and filling the air with smoke, Al-Naizi said he was confronted with\u00a0the\u00a0agonizing decision\u00a0of\u00a0whether to evacuate the children and young people. <\/p>\n
On November 2, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) closed in on Gaza City, Al-Naizi said he had no choice but to move the 40 people out of the orphanage \u2014 eight of them infants \u2014 loading them, along with non-perishable food and batteries, into three large buses. It took about two hours to evacuate the group, according to Al-Naizi, as many of the children had to be carried. They only managed to travel about 1.2 miles, before they had to set up a temporary shelter. <\/p>\n
\u201cMany streets have become closed as a result of the backfilling of destroyed buildings, as well as the street being unsuitable for vehicles to move,\u201d Al-Naizi said. \u201cWe were not able to escape to the south of Gaza City. It had become completely besieged.\u201d <\/p>\n
Carers like Al-Naizi face an impossible choice \u2014 stay put and risk being killed or flee somewhere with no promise of safety. \u201cWhere will I leave these children, on the street?\u201d Al-Naizi said. \u201cWe have no hope, except that this war will end soon.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israel launched its military campaign with the stated aim of destroying Hamas and to save the more than 240 hostages taken during the militant group\u2019s brutal October 7 attack, which Israeli authorities said killed around\u00a01,200 people. Israel\u2019s relentless aerial bombardment and ground assault has so far killed\u00a0at least\u00a011,470 people, including 4,707 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank,\u00a0citing\u00a0<\/strong>medical sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. <\/p>\n More than two-thirds of Gaza\u2019s 2.2 million people have been internally displaced since the war started, with many of them now staying in overcrowded temporary shelters that are running out of food, water, drugs and sanitation capacity as aid trickles in. More\u00a0than 15%\u00a0of those internally displaced are\u00a0disabled, according to the UN\u2019s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. <\/p>\n Streams of Palestinians \u2013 including women, children and the elderly \u2013 have been making their way south in a growing exodus along daily evacuation corridors announced by the IDF. <\/p>\n For Gazans living with disabilities \u2014 who number about 48,000, with more than a fifth of those children, according to a Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics report published\u00a0in 2019\u00a0\u2014 the prospect of evacuating is fraught, if not impossible. <\/p>\n Heba Abu Jazar Sama was working on her laptop when she said her house in Gaza started to shake. <\/p>\n \u201cMy father and mother started screaming, thinking that I had been killed,\u201d Sama added. \u201cWhen the dust cleared and they found me and my sister (who is also deaf), we started crying a lot. Had I not moved for a few moments, the stones would have fallen on my head.\u201d <\/p>\n The IDF has repeatedly called on civilians to move south of Wadi Gaza, a waterway bisecting the center of the strip, as it intensifies its assault on Gaza City and the north of the territory. <\/p>\n After Sama\u2019s home was bombed, she and her family were displaced to a shelter. <\/p>\n \u201cThere was no hope, no water, no electricity, no internet, and no blankets to cover us from the cold at night. We were suffocated and very tired,\u201d she said about the conditions in the shelter. <\/p>\n Up to 70 people could be sheltered in one room, with some forced to stay on the stairs, said Jamal Al Rozzi, executive director of the National Society for Rehabilitation, who used to live in Gaza City and fled south for his children\u2019s safety. Children with disabilities who might lack the ability to chew could go hungry, because there are not enough staff members available to blend their food, he said. <\/p>\n \ufeffPeople who are incontinent\u00a0have reduced access to diapers or accessible toilets, which means they cannot clean themselves, increasing the spread of urinary tract infections, said Reham Shaheen, a rehabilitation specialist for the international NGO, Humanity & Inclusion. The scarcity of specialized mattresses for quadriplegic Palestinians further restricts their movement, causing bedsores. <\/p>\n Shaheen warned that in crisis situations, women with intellectual disabilities are more likely to face sexual violence because they are living in spaces where men and women are packed into one place \u2013 often sharing bathrooms. Communication challenges also prevent survivors from reporting sexual assault. <\/p>\n For\u00a0disabled\u00a0Gazans who have made it to temporary shelters in the south, services that they rely on to get through each day either don\u2019t exist or are scarce, making survival more challenging than for able-bodied people. <\/p>\n People have reported queueing for hours to access food and water, where the\u00a0UN said\u00a0civilians are exposed to potential Israeli airstrikes. Those who are hearing or visually impaired, need to be accompanied while collecting supplies, making it harder for them to get what they need. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have followed a new diet to reduce consumption of materials to be enough for us for a longer period. For example, adults are not allowed to eat more than one meal a day, and we add mashed biscuits to children\u2019s milk,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cAs for drinking and treated water, we cannot access it. We drink directly from the well.\u201d <\/p>\n Israeli strikes have injured\u00a0at least\u00a029,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the\u00a0Palestinian Ministry of Health\u00a0in Ramallah, forcing doctors to triage patients with life-threatening injuries. But the health care needs of especially vulnerable populations, including women and\u00a0disabled\u00a0people, can be overlooked. <\/p>\n Drug shortages mean people are running out of medication that is not always available in local pharmacies, including Baclofen, a muscle relaxant used by people with cerebral palsy, meningitis and motor neurone disease, and Novatrim, an antibiotic treatment, added C\u0301erimovic, of HRW. <\/p>\n In the early days of the escalation, Al Rozzi and his staff of volunteers were handing out first aid supplies, mattresses, walkers and crutches to evacuees with disabilities. Now, he said, having access to a wheelchair has become a \u201cluxury.\u201d <\/p>\n Diminished access to electricity supply and battery shortages mean people with disabilities cannot power wheelchairs, elevators, nebulizers\u00a0(a machine that turns liquid medicine into mist)\u00a0or hearing aids. At least three <\/strong>communications blackouts have engulfed Gaza since October 7, reducing civilians\u2019 ability to access information, contact displaced family members and document the horrors of the Israeli bombardment. <\/p>\n Blackouts have particularly impeded communication for deaf people, who rely on internet access to\u00a0make video calls\u00a0with sign language and receive life-saving information, human rights workers said. <\/p>\n Those with hearing disabilities become \u201cisolated from the world,\u201d said Fidaa Fouad Khamis Omar, a psychologist at the National Society for the Rehabilitation of the\u00a0Disabled, based in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. <\/p>\n Al Rozzi\u2019s son Adham, 27, has cerebral palsy. Every time he hears the sound of shelling, he covers his ears and starts to shake. He cannot breathe properly, or move, Al Rozzi said. \u201cHe is becoming like stone.\u201d <\/p>\n Trauma is not a new feeling for Gazan civilians, who have lived through years under siege. These severe restrictions have been fiercely criticized by international bodies including Amnesty International,\u00a0who say\u00a0Israel has violated international law. <\/p>\n Multiple carers and aid workers said they are struggling to provide mental health support for\u00a0disabled\u00a0civilians who are terrorized by the ongoing bombardment. Their own psychological trauma is compounded by the fear that they cannot protect their loved ones. <\/p>\n \u201cEveryone has become withdrawn into themselves, not eating, drinking, sleeping, or thinking, and the fear of the unknown dominates everyone,\u201d explained Omar, the psychologist. <\/p>\n As Israeli troops\u00a0\ufeffclose in on\u00a0<\/strong>Gaza City, Al-Naizi fears the orphanage will be displaced again. A second attempt to flee, he said, would be even more dangerous than the first. The longer journey to southern Gaza is limited to travel on foot, because there is not enough fuel for buses. <\/p>\n \u201cWe really suffer a lot and feel great terror,\u201d said Al-Naizi. \u201cWe try to do our humanitarian duty towards these children, who have no fault except that they were born in Gaza.\u201d <\/p>\n\n Since Israel\u2019s complete siege on Gaza began, Hazem Saeed Al-Naizi, the director of an orphanage in Gaza City, had been gripped with fear, worried about when food, water and other basic necessities might run out for the dozens of children and young people in his care, most of whom are living with disabilities. When a <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11760,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11759","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Fleeing strikes, unable to see or hear them<\/h2>\n
Lack of accessibility, connectivity is compounded at temporary shelters<\/h2>\n
\u2018Fear of the unknown dominates everyone\u2019<\/h2>\n