Israel’s concerted attacks on Gaza’s medical infrastructure have left thousands of Palestinians on the brink of blindness.
Israeli strikes on Gaza City’s Eye Hospital — the besieged enclave’s main eye care facility — destroyed sensitive surgical equipment and put the hospital out of service for over 14 months. The hospital reopened in December 2024, but it is functioning at a drastically reduced capacity, leading to miserable conditions for people in urgent need of eye care.
Dr. Abdel Salam Sabah, director of the Eye Hospital, told the Arabic outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed last month that there is an acute medication crisis threatening patients, particularly a shortage of medicines for chronic and acute illnesses, which intensifies their suffering. He added that more than 4,000 patients suffer from glaucoma and depend on daily eye drops to keep eye pressure within safe limits, but today they are threatened with loss of vision due to the absence of appropriate treatment and the limited availability of surgical procedures.
Dr. Sabah revealed that approximately 2,400 to 2,500 patients are on waiting lists for surgical operations, 70 percent of whom require cataract surgeries, while another portion needs retinal, corneal, and strabismus surgeries.
However, the hospital has lost all modern cataract fragmentation and suction devices, numbering four machines, which previously formed the backbone of surgical work. The equipment used in retinal surgeries and the removal of shrapnel from the eye has also gone completely out of service.
“Today, there is not a single piece of specialised equipment available to perform delicate surgeries, which has catastrophically worsened the crisis and pushed waiting lists to unprecedented levels,” Dr. Sabah said.
The crushing blockade imposed by the Israelis even after the “ceasefire” went into effect on October 10 last year has meant that the few functioning hospitals in Gaza are running out of basic medicines, and that damaged specialised equipment has yet to be repaired or replaced. In a report published on October 7, 2025, the Gaza Ministry of Health said that the Israelis have destroyed all seven MRI scanners and 10 of the 17 CT scanners available in the enclave before the genocide.
Nearly half of Gaza’s hospitals are out of service, including those providing specialised care. Take, for example, Gaza’s only cancer specialist hospital. The Israelis attacked the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital at the onset of their genocidal assault on the enclave and converted it into a base for their military after the start of the ground invasion. In March last year, they bombed the hospital out of existence, leaving thousands of cancer patients in Gaza without specialised care.
This is what Gaza’s only specialist cancer care hospital looks like now:
The authorities in Gaza have made repeated appeals for medical supplies to be brought in to ease the suffering of genocide survivors, but their pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Dr. Sabah said that the Ministry of Health’s warehouses are approaching zero in sensitive surgical supplies, such as artificial lenses, fine surgical sutures, and consumable instruments used in cataract (white water) and retinal surgeries.
Despite the Israeli blockade beginning in 2007, the authorities in Gaza had developed a medical infrastructure that was able to meet the needs of residents. But the wanton destruction perpetrated by the Israelis — who have laid waste to a staggering 94 percent of hospitals and healthcare facilities in the enclave over the past two years — has made it nearly impossible for doctors to provide the care patients need.
“Before the war, retinal surgeries were performed efficiently in Gaza, but today they have almost completely ceased,” Dr. Sabah said. “The retina department alone sees 1,500 to 2,000 patients regularly, many of whom require laser sessions, Avastin injections, and close monitoring to prevent bleeding and eye leakage.” Avastin is no longer available, while a single laser machine now serves the entire Gaza Strip.
The catastrophic state of the medical infrastructure in the Gaza Strip has pushed thousands of patients to the brink of permanent blindness, even though their conditions are treatable.
“The lack of retinal surgery means that many patients are at risk of permanent blindness within days or weeks if they don’t receive timely treatment,” Dr. Hussam Daoud, a senior doctor at the Eye Hospital told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed. “Corneal transplants have been halted since the first day of the war due to the need for specialised supplies and complex conditions that are currently unavailable. This has caused dozens of patients to suffer temporary blindness that can last for months, while the procedures for referral abroad remain complicated and slow.”
Calling on international health organisations to intervene to alleviate the suffering of his patients, Dr. Daoud concluded, “Medical supplies are almost completely depleted, and if the situation continues as it is, we may have to stop working within a month.”
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I am so depressed that the contribution I made to MSF (Doctors Without Borders), the largest among my holiday donations, will not help this situation. I figured that MSF seemed to somehow manage to get some docs and equipment into Gaza and they'd supplement in situations like this. Then the Zionist scum prohibited them from Palestine — a tremendous loss, theZio-scum knew what they were doing: preparing for moves like this to further torture the Gazan people. So sickening.
May Allah come to their aid.
May Allah have mercy upon them—both the living and the matyred.