The Gaza Blockade

Israel has controlled the movement of people and goods into and out of Gaza for decades, but since the imposition of the blockade in 2007, restrictions have been severely tightened.

The Israeli-controlled Erez Crossing, located on the northern edge of the Israeli-built wall around Gaza, is the only crossing through which civilians can travel between Gaza and Israel. At the start of the Second Intifada, or Palestinian Uprising, in 2000, around 26,000 people were allowed to leave Gaza each day via the Erez crossing.

During the first nine months of 2021, the number of Palestinians allowed to leave Gaza each day averaged only 86 per day, just 17% of the daily average of 500 in 2019 and less than one percent of the daily average before the beginning of the Second Intifada.

Nearly all access to the outside world is blocked for the residents of Gaza. Students are denied exit to study abroad. Patients needing medical treatment not available in Gaza are delayed or blocked from reaching care. People with families in other parts of the occupied Palestinian territory are kept from seeing their relatives. People wishing to leave to pursue work in other places are blocked from doing so.

The only official crossing for goods into and out of Gaza is through Kerem Shalom, and any imports and exports must be regulated through a list of controlled entry items created by Israel. Israel has periodically closed Kerem Shalom entirely, including for short periods in 2018, 2020, and 2021. Severe restrictions on the import of many basic goods, including the raw materials necessary for industrial production, construction materials, medical supplies, fuel, and many consumer goods remain in place.

Like the rest of Gaza, hospitals and medical clinics have a limited supply of electricity, requiring them to rely on generators, which are expensive and do not provide dependable access to electricity. Fluctuations in the electrical supply impact sensitive medical equipment such as ultrasounds, X-rays, laboratory machines, cardiac monitors, sterilizing machines, and infants’ incubators, putting patients’ lives at risk.

Gaza doesn’t have the means to treat cancer patients, people who need heart surgery, and other complicated health procedures. These patients need medical care in Israel, the West Bank, or elsewhere. But under the blockade, movement restrictions delay and block access to treatment for patients, at times with fatal results. Only 65% requests for permits to leave Gaza to receive medical treatment were approved in 2019. In the week after Israel’s May 2021 aggression on Gaza, Israel rejected or ignored 93% of applications for exit permits for Gazan medical patients.

The blockade also prohibits the import of vital medical equipment, including X-ray, MRI, and other laboratory machines. Imports of life-saving medicine as well as basic medical supplies are also often delayed or blocked, leading to severe shortages. Israeli officials have also repeatedly turned away World Health Organization trucks full of medical supplies, without explanation. Approximately 39% of essential drugs and 21% of essential medical disposables are out of stock each month in Gaza.

There are nine community mental health centers in Gaza, in addition to one psychiatric hospital with limited capacity. However, the needs are far greater than the available resources. There are fewer than 300 mental health professionals for a population of over two million, who regularly face war, bombardment, and the daily effects of siege.

Gaza has long faced a water crisis. Overexploitation of the Coastal Aquifer on which Gaza relies—combined with contamination from chemicals, wastewater, and other pollutants—has created a situation in which 98% of Gaza’s water supply isn’t fit for human consumption.

This situation is compounded—and, in part, caused—by repeated Israeli military attacks on Gaza that have damaged or destroyed water and sanitation infrastructure, including desalination plants, wells, and waste management facilities. The blockade has also prevented Gaza from repairing or replacing this infrastructure, as Israel prohibits the import of key materials that are needed.  

As a result of damaged infrastructure, only one in ten households have access to safe drinking water. Twenty-eight percent of the population is not connected to the sewage network. Even where the sewage network is accessible, the energy crisis has forced wastewater treatment plants to shorten treatment cycles, causing a backflow of sewage onto streets and the discharge of partially treated waste into the Mediterranean Sea. Sewage treatment plants are unable to operate fully due to the electricity crisis, which results in the equivalent of 43 Olympic-sized swimming pools of raw or partly treated sewage being pumped into the sea every day, contaminating the vast majority of Gaza’s beaches.