{"id":456,"date":"2023-08-06T19:26:30","date_gmt":"2023-08-06T17:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/?p=456"},"modified":"2026-03-01T08:13:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T07:13:33","slug":"how-do-people-with-disabilities-cope-when-israel-bombs-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/?p=456","title":{"rendered":"How do people with disabilities cope when Israel bombs Gaza?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Khaled El-Hissy<\/a><\/span> The Electronic Intifada<\/a><\/span> 4 August 2023<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/header>\n

\"\"<\/picture>
When Israel invaded southern Gaza in 2014, Alaa al-Nahal, who is deaf, could not hear the Israeli attacks but he could feel them. Above, several men assist a woman wounded in the 2014 Israeli airstrikes on Khan Younis in southern\u00a0Gaza.<\/p>\n

Ramadan El-Agha<\/span> APA<\/span> images<\/span><\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Emad Qudeih was sitting with his friends on the road close to his house in Khan Younis when a loud explosion shook the area. It was May 2016<\/a>, and he was only 13. Everyone panicked and fled, leaving him\u00a0alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI attempted to flee, but I didn\u2019t know what road was safe,\u201d Qudeih, now 20, said. \u201cI\u2019m blind. I just froze and awaited my\u00a0fate.\u201d<\/p>\n

He remained still, frozen in fear, until his father rushed to his side and took him home. The Israeli military had bombed the area, and this was not the first time Qudeih had been caught in the violence of the\u00a0occupation.<\/p>\n

In the 2014 war<\/a>, Qudeih and his family had to evacuate their home during Israeli ground invasions of the southern Gaza\u00a0Strip.<\/p>\n

All Palestinians in Gaza are vulnerable during Israeli attacks, but blind Palestinians are even more at\u00a0risk.<\/p>\n

Medications of no\u00a0use<\/h2>\n

Qudeih was not born blind; he lost his sight\u00a0gradually.<\/p>\n

In the first grade, he lost sight in his right eye due to retinal detachment. Two years later he lost sight in his left eye for the same reason. He was 7 years\u00a0old.<\/p>\n

Between the ages of 7 and 14, he had surgery after surgery at St. John of Jerusalem Eye\u00a0Hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe surgeries proved successful, and I was able to see for a while,\u201d Qudeih said, \u201cbut a haze would eventually obscure my\u00a0vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turned out that there was bleeding in his retinas. The doctors said the bleeding would go away with time and medications like eye\u00a0drops.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the medications were of no use,\u201d Qudeih\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

In 2015, when he was 12 years old, he traveled to Spain<\/a> and underwent five surgeries in three months, but he lost vision completely several months after the\u00a0surgeries.<\/p>\n

Qudeih spoke to The Electronic Intifada at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he is pursuing a degree in English\u00a0translation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn addition to proving myself to my professors,\u201d he said, \u201cit took me time to learn to navigate university\u00a0facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

He counts his steps while walking, so he can retrace them. He has also memorized various routes to help him get\u00a0around.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be an activist who appears on TV<\/span>, speaking both Arabic and English,\u201d Qudeih said, \u201cdescribing our needs as both disabled people and as\u00a0Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one is going to hire a deaf\u00a0person\u201d<\/h2>\n

Alaa al-Nahal, 52, was watching the news on television during Israel\u2019s 2014 war on Gaza, when suddenly he felt rumbling very close to his home, though he heard\u00a0nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt the floor shaking and understood that the Israelis were bombing very near,\u201d he said. \u201cMy wife hurried to me, telling me that it is better to evacuate the\u00a0house.\u201dThe family gathered their belongings to evacuate Rafah \u2013 Gaza\u2019s southernmost city. Israel declared a ground invasion on the Gaza Strip from the\u00a0south.As the family were preparing to leave, a strong explosion shattered the\u00a0windows.\u201cThey didn\u2019t give us any warning [of the bombing],\u201d al-Nahal\u00a0said.Despite the terror of that night, al-Nahal said he didn\u2019t face any special challenges during the\u00a0war.\u201cI found no difficulties other than not feeling safe in my\u00a0house.\u201dMany Palestinians in Gaza, living under siege, might say the same thing. But when al-Nahal was born, he had a fever that caused his hearing\u00a0loss.Al-Nahal communicates with sign language, and his wife translated for us during our interview at their\u00a0home.<\/p>\n

He said his condition does not feel isolating, though he wishes he could find\u00a0work.From 2001, al-Nahal had worked as a driver to support his four daughters and one son. However, when his car broke down in 2020, he had to sell it. Currently, the family receives social welfare payments to provide the daily necessities \u2013 though those payments are not always reliable<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no income, and no one is going to hire a deaf person,\u201d al-Nahal said. Sometimes his siblings help him out. But unemployment is already over 40 percent<\/a> in Gaza, the result of the Israeli blockade, and his chances for work are\u00a0small.<\/p>\n

Occupation doesn\u2019t\u00a0differentiate<\/h2>\n

Hasan al-Zaalan, the head of the Palestinian General Union of People with Disabilities<\/a>, explained how people with disabilities face many obstacles during Israel\u2019s\u00a0attacks.\u201cPeople with disabilities face many obstacles amid wars, such as having limited mobility as they escape the bombing,\u201d he\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe occupation does not differentiate between people with disabilities and others in wars. They do not respect their rights. In the last war, we had three \u2026 martyrs [who had disabilities] and others were\u00a0injured.\u201d<\/p>\n

On 6 April 2018, Mahmoud Malakha, 34, who lives in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, was going to retrieve the key to his coffee and snack shop from an employee who was attending the Great March of Return<\/a> along the boundary with\u00a0Israel.<\/p>\n

He was among the other protesters when he \u201cfelt a powerful electric shock in my leg and fell to the ground,\u201d he said. \u201cA sniper\u2019s bullet struck my\u00a0leg.\u201d<\/p>\n

After he fell to the ground, people crowded around him and he was carried to an\u00a0ambulance.<\/p>\n

This was not the first injury inflicted on him by an Israeli\u00a0weapon.<\/p>\n

In the 2009 war on Gaza, he was on a bus with his friends when an Israeli airstrike hit the bus. Malakha was the only survivor. It is not a day in his life that he feels comfortable talking about in\u00a0detail.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spent one year and seven months lying in bed, unable to move my hands or neck,\u201d he said. \u201cI had to wear diapers because I was not able to go to the\u00a0bathroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nine years later, he was again rushed to the hospital. Doctors there insisted on immediate amputation, but Malakha\u00a0refused.<\/p>\n

Over the next two years, he had dozens of surgeries to help him regain use of his leg. When he developed bone cancer in 2020, he underwent chemotherapy, but amputation of his leg<\/a> was the only way to eradicate the cancer\u00a0completely.<\/p>\n

In September 2022, Malakha had his 89th surgery, by his own count. He woke up seven hours later to continue his life with one\u00a0leg.<\/p>\n

\u201cI approached the situation with a sense of normalcy,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter the operation, I returned home, rested, woke up the next morning and went to the\u00a0market.\u201d<\/p>\n

As compensation for his lost leg, Malakha receives about $165 each month. A compensation that barely puts food on the table for his wife and the four\u00a0children.<\/p>\n

To support his family, Malakha opened a coffee shop in Gaza\u2019s port. But there were too many challenges to overcome and it\u00a0failed.<\/p>\n

So he became a taxi\u00a0driver.<\/p>\n

\u201cSurrendering to people\u2019s opinions and the harsh reality would only lead to excessive overthinking and stress,\u201d he said. \u201cI made a conscious decision to not give\u00a0up.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 2014 war, when he still had both legs, his house was damaged by a nearby strike, and his family had to\u00a0evacuate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no doubt that getting out of the second floor is hard. I can focus my mind on the difficulty, but I don\u2019t want to. It will only hurt me and destroy my children. Adapting to this reality is the only option I\u00a0have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khaled El-Hissy is a journalist from Jabaliya in the Gaza\u00a0Strip.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Khaled El-Hissy The Electronic Intifada 4 August 2023 When Israel invaded southern Gaza in 2014, Alaa al-Nahal, who is deaf, could not hear the Israeli attacks but he could feel them. Above, several men assist a woman wounded in the 2014 Israeli airstrikes on Khan Younis in southern\u00a0Gaza. Ramadan El-Agha APA images Emad Qudeih was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":489,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":457,"href":"https:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlus.newweapons.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}