Israel's Blockade Means Gaza's Hospitals Cannot Provide Food to Recovering Patients

Sobhi al-Bursh, who was injured in a bombing and lost his foot, is fed beans brought from home by his father, Mohamed, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Sobhi al-Bursh, who was injured in a bombing and lost his foot, is fed beans brought from home by his father, Mohamed, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
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Israel's Blockade Means Gaza's Hospitals Cannot Provide Food to Recovering Patients

Sobhi al-Bursh, who was injured in a bombing and lost his foot, is fed beans brought from home by his father, Mohamed, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Sobhi al-Bursh, who was injured in a bombing and lost his foot, is fed beans brought from home by his father, Mohamed, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

It cost a fortune, she said, but Asmaa Fayez managed to buy a few zucchinis in a Gaza market. She cooked them with rice and brought it to her 4-year-old son, who has been in the hospital for the past week. The soup was his only meal of the day, and he asked for more.

“It’s all finished, darling,” Fayez replied softly. Still, it was an improvement from the canned beans and tuna she brings on other days, she said.

Hospital patients are among the most vulnerable as Palestinians across Gaza struggle to feed themselves, with Israel's blockade on food and other supplies entering the territory now in its third month.

With hospitals unable to provide food, families must bring whatever they can find for loved ones.

“Most, if not all, wounded patients have lost weight, especially in the past two months,” Dr. Khaled Alserr, a general surgeon at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, told The Associated Press. Nutritional supplements for intensive care unit patients are lacking, he said.

“Our hands are tied when it comes to making the best choice for patients. Choices are limited,” he said.

Hunger worsens as supplies dwindle

Malnutrition is on the rise across Gaza, aid groups say. Thousands of children have been found with acute malnutrition in the past month, but adults as well are not getting proper nutrients, according to the UN. It estimates that 16,000 pregnant women and new mothers this year face acute malnutrition.

Since Israel’s blockade began on March 2, food sources have been drying up. Aid groups have stopped food distribution. Bakeries have closed. Charity kitchens handing out bowls of pasta or lentils remain the last lifeline for most of the population, but they are rapidly closing for lack of supplies, the UN says.

Markets are empty of almost everything but canned goods and small amounts of vegetables, and prices have been rising. Local production of vegetables has plummeted because Israeli forces have damaged 80% of Gaza's farmlands, the UN says, and much of the rest is inaccessible inside newly declared military zones.

Fayez’s son, Ali al-Dbary, was admitted to Nasser Hospital because of a blocked intestine, suffering from severe cramps and unable to use the bathroom. Fayez believes it’s because he has been eating little but canned goods. She splurged on the zucchini, which now costs around $10 a kilogram (2.2 pounds). Before the war it was less than a dollar.

Doctors said the hospital doesn’t have a functioning scanner to diagnose her son and decide whether he needs surgery.

Israel says it imposed the blockade and resumed its military campaign in March to pressure Hamas to release its remaining hostages and disarm.

Hamas ignited the war with its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in which militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostage, most of whom have been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Israel's offensive has killed over 52,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants.

Concern over Israeli plans to control aid Israeli officials have asserted that enough food entered Gaza during a two-month ceasefire earlier this year. Rights groups have disputed that and called the blockade a “starvation tactic” and a potential war crime.

Now Israeli plans to control aid distribution in Gaza, using private contractors to distribute supplies. The UN and aid groups have rejected the idea, saying it could restrict who is eligible to give and receive aid and could force large numbers of Palestinians to move — which would violate international law.

Those under care at hospitals, and their families who scrounge to feed them, would face further challenges under Israel's proposal. Moving to reach aid could be out of the question.

Another patient at Nasser Hospital, 19-year-old Asmaa Faraj, had shrapnel in her chest from an airstrike that hit close to her tent and a nearby charity kitchen in camps for displaced people outside Khan Younis.

When the AP visited, the only food she had was a small bag of dates, a date cookie and some water bottles. Her sister brought her some pickles.

“People used to bring fruits as a gift when they visited sick people in hospitals,” said the sister, Salwa Faraj. “Today, we have bottles of water.”

She said her sister needs protein, fruits and vegetables but none are available.

Mohammed al-Bursh managed to find a few cans of tuna and beans to bring for his 30-year-old son, Sobhi, who was wounded in an airstrike three months ago. Sobhi’s left foot was amputated, and he has two shattered vertebrae in his neck.

Al-Bursh gently gave his son spoonfuls of beans as he lay still in the hospital bed, a brace on his neck.

“Everything is expensive,” Sobhi al-Bursh said, gritting with pain that he says is constant. He said he limits what he eats to help save his father money.

He believes that his body needs meat to heal. “It has been three months, and nothing heals,” he said.



'No Life Without Water': Settler Attacks Threaten West Bank Communities

The Ein Samiyah spring is a vital water source for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank grappling with chronic shortages. Zain JAAFAR / AFP
The Ein Samiyah spring is a vital water source for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank grappling with chronic shortages. Zain JAAFAR / AFP
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'No Life Without Water': Settler Attacks Threaten West Bank Communities

The Ein Samiyah spring is a vital water source for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank grappling with chronic shortages. Zain JAAFAR / AFP
The Ein Samiyah spring is a vital water source for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank grappling with chronic shortages. Zain JAAFAR / AFP

From his monitoring station on a remote hill in the occupied West Bank, water operator Subhil Olayan keeps watch over a lifeline for Palestinians, the Ein Samiyah spring.

So when Israeli settlers recently attacked the system of wells, pumps and pipelines he oversees, he knew the stakes, AFP reported.

"There is no life without water, of course", he said, following the attack which temporarily cut off the water supply to nearby villages.

The spring, which feeds the pumping station, is the main or backup water source for some 110,000 people, according to the Palestinian company that manages it -- making it one of the most vital in the West Bank, where water is in chronic short supply.

The attack is one of several recent incidents in which settlers have been accused of damaging, diverting or seizing control of Palestinian water sources.

"The settlers came and the first thing they did was break the pipeline. And when the pipeline is broken, we automatically have to stop pumping" water to nearby villages, some of which exclusively rely on the Ein Samiyah spring.

"The water just goes into the dirt, into the ground," Olayan told AFP, adding that workers immediately fixed the damage to resume water supply.

Just two days after the latest attack, Israeli settlers -- some of them armed -- splashed in pools just below the spring, while Olayan monitored water pressure and cameras from a distance.

His software showed normal pressure in the pipes pulling water from the wells and the large pipe carrying water up the hill to his village of Kafr Malik.

But he said maintenance teams dared not venture down to the pumping station out of fear for their safety.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, deadly settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have become commonplace.

Last week, settlers beat a 20-year-old dual US citizen to death in the nearby village of Sinjil, prompting US ambassador Mike Huckabee to urge Israel to "aggressively investigate" the killing.

- Annexation -

Issa Qassis, chairman on the board of the Jerusalem Water Undertaking, which manages the Ein Samiyah spring, said he viewed the attacks as a tool for Israeli land grabs and annexation.

"When you restrict water supply in certain areas, people simply move where water is available", he told AFP at a press conference.

"So in a plan to move people to other lands, water is the best and fastest way", he said.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, several Israeli politicians and officials have become increasingly vocal in support of annexing the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

Most prominent among them is Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler, who said in November that 2025 would be the year Israel applies its sovereignty over the Palestinian territory.

Qassis accused Israel's government of supporting settler attacks such as the one on Ein Samiyah.

The Israeli army told AFP that soldiers were not aware of the incident in which pipes were damaged, "and therefore were unable to prevent it".

The damage to Ein Samiyah's water facilities was not an isolated incident.

In recent months, settlers in the nearby Jordan Valley took control of the Al-Auja spring by diverting its water from upstream, said Farhan Ghawanmeh, a representative of the Ras Ein Al Auja community.

He said two other springs in the area had also recently been taken over.

- Water rights -

In Dura al-Qaraa, another West Bank village that uses the Ein Samiyah spring as a back-up water source, residents are also concerned about increasingly long droughts and the way Israel regulates their water rights.

"For years now, no one has been planting because the water levels have decreased," said Rafeaa Qasim, a member of the village council, citing lower rainfall causing the land to be "basically abandoned".

Qasim said that though water shortages in the village have existed for 30 years, residents' hands are tied in the face of this challenge.

"We have no options; digging a well is not allowed", despite the presence of local water springs, he said, pointing to a well project that the UN and World Bank rejected due to Israeli law prohibiting drilling in the area.

The lands chosen for drilling sit in the West Bank's Area C, which covers more than 60 percent of the territory and is under full Israeli control.

Israeli NGO B'Tselem reported in 2023 that the legal system led to sharp disparities in water access within the West Bank between Palestinians and Israelis.

Whereas nearly all residents of Israel and Israeli settlements have running water every day, only 36 percent of West Bank Palestinians do, the report said.

In Dura al-Qaraa, Qasim fears for the future.

"Each year, the water decreases and the crisis grows -- it's not getting better, it's getting worse."