It was just after 10 p.m. on November 19, 2023, when 24-year-old Rozan Kheira was jolted awake from sleep by the roar of explosions, frantic screams, and widespread panic that tore through her family’s Gaza City home. An Israeli air strike had reduced the building around her to rubble before she could even register what was happening.
When Kheira tried to scramble out of bed, her legs gave out immediately. She pushed herself up a second time, only to collapse again. Glancing down, she discovered a pool of blood spreading across the floor beneath her; her foot had been severed in the blast, held to her leg only by a thin strip of skin.
“I had just woken up and couldn’t comprehend what was happening,” Kheira recalled in an interview with Middle East Eye. “At that moment, I forgot we were even at war.” Stuck frozen in shock, she waited helpless until her brother carried her out of the destroyed home. That single night would forever alter the trajectory of her life.
In the wake of Israel’s military campaign that has destroyed Gaza’s hospitals, killed thousands of medical workers, and enforced a total blockade on fuel and life-saving medicine entering the enclave, injuries that would be easily treatable in any other context have become permanent, life-altering disabilities — and in thousands of cases, fatal. Kheira was rushed to Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital, where after hours of uncontrolled bleeding, surgeons were forced to fully amputate her leg.
In the two years since the strike, Kheira has lived her life confined to a wheelchair, repeatedly displaced by advancing ground operations and unable to access even the most basic medical care. “I was in excruciating pain, and painkillers were unavailable in northern Gaza because of the Israeli siege,” she said. Even after the October ceasefire, which the international community heralded as a step toward easing humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s 2.2 million residents, little has changed for injured civilians like Kheira.
Desperate to regain even a measure of independence, Kheira began a months-long search for a properly fitted prosthetic limb. When her family was forced to flee to Khan Younis in southern Gaza last June, she received her first prosthetic — but the device quickly proved unusable. “The prosthetic leg was extremely heavy, weighing five kilograms. It didn’t match my body and made my suffering worse instead of easing it,” she explained. After the ceasefire allowed her to return to Gaza City, the Artificial Limbs and Polio Centre fitted her with a second device, which was also far too heavy for her to use.
Undeterred, Kheira set out on foot to Hamad Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics in northern Gaza’s Sudaniya district, a journey of more than six kilometers she completed on a single leg because no transport was available to her. After multiple medical assessments, she finally received a third prosthetic. Still, her struggles are far from over: the device only meets 30 percent of her medical needs, but it is the only option available to her amid Gaza’s catastrophic shortage of medical equipment. Doctors have warned her against walking on the ill-fitted limb, but Kheira has no other choice.
Even the ongoing rehabilitation and maintenance she requires to use the prosthetic adds to her daily hardship. “I need weekly maintenance at Hamad Hospital, which means long walks on one leg just to get there,” she said. “There are no vehicles, not even donkey carts. Transport is scarce and extremely expensive.” This mobility crisis is not unique to Kheira: ongoing Israeli restrictions on fuel entering Gaza — a direct violation of the ceasefire agreement — combined with the destruction of 70 percent of Gaza’s civilian transport infrastructure, have left the entire enclave unable to move freely, cutting injured civilians off from life-saving care.
The U.S.-backed October ceasefire was intended to end Israel’s military campaign and blockade, and allow unimpeded access for aid, medicine, and rehabilitation supplies to enter Gaza. But in practice, Israel has largely maintained its total blockade, permitting only a tiny fraction of the required aid into the territory, leaving fuel, food, and medical supplies at critically low levels. Air strikes and artillery shelling have also continued across the enclave, killing more than 800 people since the ceasefire was announced. In total, Israeli forces have killed more than 72,700 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, and wounded more than 172,000 others.
According to data from the World Health Organization, roughly 43,000 Palestinians have sustained permanent, life-altering injuries during the current conflict, including around 10,000 children. While a small fraction of these injured people, like Kheira, have managed to secure basic, ill-fitted prosthetics, thousands more with upper-limb injuries have been left with no access to any assistive device at all.
One of those people is 32-year-old Abdelsalam al-Bardawil, who lost his left hand in an Israeli strike that destroyed his Gaza City home, killing his mother and brother and injuring the rest of his family. “My hand could have been saved, but because hospitals were out of service, it was amputated,” al-Bardawil told Middle East Eye. “I didn’t receive physical therapy, and painkillers weren’t available. I remember jumping from the intense pain.”
After being displaced to Deir al-Balah in southern Gaza, al-Bardawil traveled to the Jordanian Field Hospital in Khan Younis, where he was fitted with a prosthetic hand. But he was forced to remove it shortly after, because the device was heavy, rigid, and purely cosmetic, completely unable to assist him with daily tasks. He later reached out to the Red Crescent in Deir al-Balah and other humanitarian organizations, but received the same answer every time: no upper-limb prosthetics are available in Gaza.
Unable to work or provide for himself, al-Bardawil now relies entirely on humanitarian aid to survive. “What saddens me most is my inability to work,” he said. “It forces me to depend on assistance.” He also struggles to access mental health care and pain treatment, with transport shortages making even routine clinic visits nearly impossible. “The problem isn’t just therapy,” he said. “I can’t reach clinics for medication or depression treatment.” The loss of his mother, who he turned to for help without shame, has left even small daily tasks a source of embarrassment and struggle. “The only person I could ask for help without shame was my mother,” he said. “Now I feel embarrassed asking my sister or relatives.”
Al-Bardawil has received an official referral for life-saving treatment outside of Gaza, but like thousands of other injured Palestinians, he remains trapped on a waiting list, blocked by frequent closures and strict Israeli restrictions at Gaza’s border crossings. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 20,000 patients are currently waiting for approval to leave Gaza for treatment abroad, with access repeatedly delayed or blocked entirely by Israeli officials.
While Gaza’s local hospitals and rehabilitation centers have attempted to ramp up domestic production of prosthetics to meet the growing need, officials say they are completely overwhelmed by the unprecedented scale of casualties. Hosni Muhanna, media officer at the Gaza Municipality’s Artificial Limbs and Polio Centre, told Middle East Eye that registered amputations have reached roughly 6,000 since the start of the war, per joint data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“This unprecedented figure reflects the massive scale of the humanitarian and health catastrophe,” Muhanna said. The centre relies on a small local workshop to produce prosthetics in-house, but a total ban on essential raw materials entering Gaza has crippled production capacity, particularly for upper-limb devices. “The ban on essential supplies since the start of the war has crippled production, particularly for upper-limb prosthetics, as raw materials have not been allowed in,” he explained.
The blockade has created acute shortages of every type of prosthetic component and assistive device, leaving long waiting lists that grow longer every day as new amputations are recorded amid ongoing attacks. “Fitting a limb requires medical assessment, physiotherapy to prepare the muscles, and a full rehabilitation programme to train patients and restore independence,” Muhanna said. But many patients cannot complete these critical steps due to repeated displacement, transport shortages, and the total destruction of Gaza’s health infrastructure.
Back at his displacement camp in Deir al-Balah, al-Bardawil continues to wait for a call that will allow him to leave Gaza for the treatment he needs to rebuild his life. “I feel like my life is completely on hold,” he said. “I didn’t just lose my hand. I feel like I lost my life.”
