<\/p>\n
Anas Hatem El-Munyrawi, a 27-year-old mechanical engineering student from Gaza woke up in a hospital bed on 18 May 2018 to find his lower left leg amputated below the knee.<\/span><\/p>\n El-Munyrawi was attending a demonstration at the Gaza border with friends when he was shot by an Israeli sniper. Unarmed and defenceless, El-Munyrawi fell to the ground as a medical team surrounded him. <\/span><\/p>\n A few short hours later he awoke and discovered his life had been changed forever.<\/span><\/p>\n “When I woke up was when the real suffering began. The pain was unbearable for months, I felt so powerless,” El-Munyrawi told Palestine Monitor.<\/span><\/p>\n According to Mohammed Dwaima, Director of the Artificial Limbs and Polio Center (ALPC) located in Gaza City, El-Munyrawi is one of 249 Gazans who have sustained disabling injuries since the start of the Great March of Return rallies in March 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n A United Nations <\/span>report<\/span><\/a> finds that Israeli gunfire inflicts “extensive bone and tissue damage” against individuals, that require “very complex and timely limb reconstructive surgeries” for which hospitals in Gaza are poorly equipped. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n However, suffering does not stop there. The 12-year Israeli-Egypt blockade on Gaza has made recovery for Palestinian amputees a long and arduous process, restricting access to proper social services and the entry of doctors and sufficient medical supplies. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to a 2019 UK Aid <\/span>report<\/span><\/a> on <\/span>Disability in Gaza<\/span>, around seven per cent of the Gazan population suffer from some form of impairment. Violent Israeli military force in the region has brought mobility-related disabilities to the majority, followed by sight, hearing, and learning impairments.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wael Abu Riziq, Executive Director at the National Center for Community Rehabilitation in Gaza City, states that disabled people living in Gaza face many institutional and environmental obstacles in addition to barriers acknowledging their rights. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The <\/span>report<\/span><\/a> outlines these barriers as; access to public services, employment, and social inclusion.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Conflict and poverty are strongly <\/span>interlinked<\/span><\/a> with disability in Gaza. The Israeli blockade has greatly restricted access to basic services such as healthcare, education, water, sanitation, and electricity, making uninhabitable conditions even more debilitating for the physically disabled.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Poverty in Gaza largely stems from lack of employment opportunities and funding in the region. A 2011 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics Disability <\/span>survey<\/span><\/a> found that over 90 per cent of disabled Gazans were unemployed. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to the survey, a lack of plans, strategies, and funding to include people with disabilities in the labour market is a great contributor to this shocking statistic, in addition to a negative stigma of disabled persons by employers. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This can also be reflected in the 40 per cent of households with disabled children <\/span>surveyed<\/span><\/a> in Gaza that were found to have monthly incomes around half of the extreme poverty line.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dwaima says that being one of the only prosthetic limb centres in the region, access to healthcare and rehabilitation is scarce and challenging due to the restriction of movement in and out of Gaza. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n “The problem here is we lack the material, there are no referrals, no cooperation or coordination with the minister of health, and a shortage of doctors,” Dwaima told Palestine Monitor.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dwaima says that 28 different materials needed to build the prosthetic limbs at the ALPC have been held at the Gaza border by Israel due to reasons of “security risks”.<\/span><\/p>\n The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (<\/span>COGAT) cited their concerns for the materials to be used for a “dual-purpose” but dismissed Dwaima’s inquiries for more information.<\/span><\/p>\n According to Dwaima the services that are available are usually short and project-based, not lasting more than 12 months, that lack the funding, mobile clinics, and follow up initiatives for proper rehabilitation.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Poor infrastructure and transportation also hinder disabled persons access to healthcare and social services in Gaza. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to Riziq, there are limited transportation options for the disabled in Gaza and those that treatment centres offer are too costly for the average household. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In addition to the lack of medical equipment for the physically impaired, most prominently prosthetics and hearing aids, treatment centres also <\/span>lack<\/span><\/a> the necessary amounts of examination beds and seats for patients. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Access to education is also another institutional disadvantage for the disabled in Gaza.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Palestine Bureau for statistics <\/span>survey<\/span><\/a> also found that “42.2 per cent of people with disabilities in Gaza had never enrolled in school” compared to the West Bank figure of 35.5 per cent, and “27.1 per cent reported dropping out and that 56.3 per cent were illiterate”. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A majority of underfunded schools in Gaza are unable to accommodate for the physically impaired in <\/span>infrastructure<\/span><\/a> and staff poorly trained to accommodate for the mentally impaired in the class curriculum.<\/span><\/p>\n In honour of International Day for Disabled Persons on the 3 of December, Israel <\/span>donated<\/span><\/a> three pediatric wheelchairs to the UN Human Rights Council. <\/span><\/p>\n