Amman/Jerusalem – Thousands of people in Gaza, Palestine, are at heightened risk of death and severe illness, as Israeli authorities continue to restrict the entry of engine oil and spare parts into the enclave, warns Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). These supplies are needed to keep hospital generators, ambulances, water pumps and water trucks running. The impediment of these essential services is emblematic of Israel’s systematic destruction of the necessities for life in Gaza.
In some facilities, MSF barely has enough engine oil to last a month, and some of our equipment has already been affected by shortages. We are forced to try and find stocks at the local market for extortionate prices. The supply of engine oil is so limited that the price has increased 20 times in the last six months. By the end of July, it was more than US$1,300 per litre. Neither the quality nor the availability is guaranteed.
On 5 August, one of the generators at the MSF field hospital in Deir Al-Balah broke down. Forced to rely on a smaller backup generator, teams had to drastically ration electricity during this time. We were only able to run the operating theatre for people in the most critical condition; nurses could not sterilise essential equipment; x-ray services stopped; and people with painful burns were left to suffer in extreme heat without air conditioning.
“What we are witnessing in Gaza is not a series of isolated shortages, it is a policy of attrition by design,” says Filipe Ribeiro, MSF head of mission in Palestine. “For more than two years, we have observed Israel’s policies impairing the entry of supplies. These policies do not merely delay aid; they dismantle the very systems people rely on to survive.”
“Today it is engine oil and spare parts. Tomorrow it will be something else,” says Ribeiro. “The items change, but the logic remains the same: reduce people to conditions where life becomes untenable, where dignity is systematically stripped away through the denial of the most ordinary, most essential goods. This is not bureaucracy. It is a deliberate effort to make existence itself impossible.”