Before October 2023, Gaza's infrastructure for disabled children was already minimal — a handful of specialized centers serving a population of two million. What existed has now been largely destroyed or rendered inaccessible. The Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children in Gaza City was partially levelled and converted into a displacement shelter. The al-Noor school for blind students in Tal al-Hawa, the only public school in Gaza designated for middle and high school students with visual impairments, was badly damaged and forced to close. The siege has made replacement parts, batteries, and even prescription lenses unobtainable. The numbers tell a story of compounding harm. According to Fadel Kuraz, a sign language interpreter and disability rights advocate with Atfaluna, the baseline number of people with hearing disabilities registered before October 2023 was approximately 20,000. Field assessments now estimate roughly 35,000 new individuals have suffered total or partial hearing loss from explosions — a 175% increase in the population requiring services, arriving precisely as those services have collapsed to near zero. Thirteen-year-old Kenan al-Sabaa's situation illustrates the cascade. His hearing aid's plastic tubing and rubber ear mould need fixing; the batteries are depleted. None of these parts are available under the blockade. He missed an entire year of school during the first year of war. The temporary learning space he now accesses operates three days a week, two hours per day — six hours weekly to compensate for more than a year of lost instruction. His deafness makes movement through unfamiliar, bombed-out neighborhoods dangerous: he cannot hear explosions or warning signals. Twelve-year-old Jana Shreim, who is legally blind, lost her prescription glasses during the mass exodus from the Shati refugee camp in November 2023. The family attempted wire repairs, but the lenses were damaged beyond use. Replacements are unaffordable and, under the blockade, unobtainable. Her vision has deteriorated to the point where she identifies people by their voices. Her mother now teaches her at home using a Braille writing machine, trying to prevent the loss of literacy skills that took years to build. The al-Noor center Jana attended was destroyed in Israeli bombing. The educational counsellor Duaa Omar Basheer, who worked at al-Noor before the war, frames the stakes plainly: an entire generation of visually impaired individuals is at risk of illiteracy and permanent academic loss. The school previously served about 80 pupils from across Gaza, many arriving on dedicated buses. Damaged roads and destroyed transport infrastructure now make even reaching a functioning school impossible for children who cannot navigate independently. What makes this particularly extractive is the irreversibility. Hearing aids, Braille literacy, sign language fluency, and independent mobility skills require continuous reinforcement, especially for children in developmental windows. Every month of interrupted learning compounds. A child who loses Braille proficiency does not simply resume where they left off. A child whose hearing deteriorates without audiological care does not recover when the siege lifts. The blockade is not pausing these children's development — it is permanently degrading it. UNRWA provides some primary education through its centers, but there is no substitute for the specialized instruction these children require. The temporary spaces Atfaluna has set up are a fraction of what existed before. The siege's restriction on medical supplies, educational materials, and even batteries for hearing aids constitutes a systematic denial of the basic infrastructure disabled children need to develop. The cost is being paid by the most vulnerable members of an already devastated population, and it compounds with every week that passes.
