Disability in Gaza

Posted on by Grayson Schultz
a photo in Palestine during the sunset with text overlapping - "This international day of persons with disabilities, please remember that wars are mass disabling events." // Under the text is a digital sketch drawing by Kalyn Heffernan of Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh on the front lines in Gaza. Holding high a peace sign and the Palestinian flag in a wheelchair as a double amputee with no legs. Shot and killed by Israeli soldiers at 29 yrs old after being shot losing both his legs for protesting.

I published this on Dec 3, 2023, on my Substack newsletter.

Today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, a day set aside in 1992 by the United Nations to discuss the rights of disabled people. In 2006, they put out the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities — a document that requires countries to take care of and pay attention to how their disabled citizens are living in addition to other requirements.

Israel signed onto the Convention in 2007, ratifying it in 2012. Their status as occupiers in Palestine means this applies to Palestinians, too, and that Israel is responsible for ensuring the 50,000 (and growing) disabled Palestinians have all of their rights and are safe.

And yet, if that was the case, this specific newsletter wouldn’t exist.

So, let’s talk about disability in Gaza.

“The Israeli military’s major ground offensive in Gaza adds immeasurably to the serious difficulties for people with disabilities to flee, find shelter, and obtain water, food, medicine, and assistive devices they desperately need,” said Emina Ćerimović, the senior disability rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The United States and other Israeli allies should press Israel to take all necessary steps to protect people with disabilities and lift the blockade.”

People in Gaza lack wheelchairs, prosthetics, crutches, hearing aids, and other assistive devices — a result of the 16-year long blockade.

Even if you do have a wheelchair, how do you navigate areas of mass bombing? Once you find a safer space to exist in, how long will it be until you’re forced to move again?

How do you try to move in a world that is now even more inaccessible to you than before?

All of this, among other reasons, is why a report earlier this year found that Israel was violating the rights of disabled Palestinians.

Deaf folks cannot hear the airstrikes.

Blind folks cannot navigate the rubble or new areas easily on their own.

The hospitals, schools, and other spaces that people may previously have sheltered in are inaccessible, overfull, or being destroyed despite the destruction being a violation of international humanitarian law.

Without access to electricity and the internet, some assistive devices like CPAP machines or augmented communication devices aren’t even able to function.

Others cannot communicate with the people who can help them the most, with their cell phones out of battery or unable to connect to the internet.

And none of this even begins to approach the issue of a lack of access to regular medical care for cancer, kidney disease, and more — or how the lack of UNWRA staff and supplies means many people, like Al Madhoun, are going without medication that they need to live.

Madhoun, a 39-year-old woman, cannot access medication for high blood pressure or diabetes: “Usually, I get the medication from UNRWA, but there is no organization on the ground right now giving out medication.”

Do you know how easy it is to die without access to diabetes medication? Absurdly so.

Madhoun also shared that she doesn’t “have people here whom I know, I cannot access water or food and I don’t feel safe.”

Not to mention how disease is running through the area rampantly. An upper respiratory infection that sound a lot like COVID-19 is among them. Bisan Owda, a 24-year old filmmaker, is just one person who is incredibly ill and struggling with their health. She is also one of the few people who has done the most to share about what’s going on every day in Gaza who is still alive.

Some of the URI-like symptoms could also be from the toxic materials used in building construction that have been vaporized and breathed in by folks of all ages. We know these materials cause a ton of health issues, including lung disease and cancer, because of September 11th, 2001.

The lack of access to food, water, proper toilets, disease-free zones, and more is all leading to a high death toll for Palestinians — and especially disabled Palestinians.

One statistic that’s been heavily shared is that half of Gazans are children. This is true, but have you stopped to consider why? Jesse does, in this piece on what disability justice means in Gaza.

And, as Alice Wong highlights in her recent piece “Why Palestinian Liberation Is Disability Justice”

I’m no expert but I know what it means to be dehumanized, rendered disposable, and oppressed. I know that all people deserve freedom. I know that genocide is a mass disabling event and a form of eugenics.

All of this is not new, but may be new to some of you. And that’s okay.

But, as a sign of how not-new it is, consider that for some this is their fifth war — and they’re not even that old.

This siege hasn’t been just 55+ days. It’s been decades of increasingly horrific actions.

And it has to stop.

So, this International Day of People with Disabilities, please consider the ways disabled people are being actively harmed around you — and what you can do to stop it.

How You Can Take Action

Resources + Further Learning

If there are additional topics that you’d like to learn specifically about RE Palestine and/or disability, please reach out! I’m happy to recommend links, books, or whatever feels most accessible to help.