Disease ravages Gaza as Israel continues to deliberately block aid 

Deadly diseases are now ravaging Gaza despite millions of dollars worth of humanitarian aid piling up in warehouses across the region.

Boxes of water and sanitation equipment ready to be shipped from an Oxfam warehouse in Bicester. Photo: Alan Turnbull / Oxfam

Preventable and easily treatable waterborne diseases have increased by almost 150% in Gaza in the last three months, as Israel continues to deliberately block aid.  

Available multi-agency health data shows that the number of Palestinians presenting to health facilities with acute watery diarrhea has increased by 150%, bloody diarrhea by 302% and cases of acute jaundice by 101%.  

Even these figures should be seen as grossly underreported as most of the two million people trapped by Israel's continuing siege have limited access to the few health facilities that have managed to remain operational.  

This wave of disease can quickly turn deadly, especially as Palestinians living in Gaza have been deprived of access to adequate food, water, shelter and health care for over 21 months. Their communities and family networks have been shattered, and people have been made more vulnerable by repeated displacement and continued violence.  

Israel has placed Gaza under an almost total blockade since 2 March this year, stopping all but a small amount of aid from entering Gaza. There are no longer any stocks of humanitarian aid held by international organizations inside Gaza.  

As a result, international humanitarian donors and organizations have been forced to collect more than 420,000 pallets of emergency aid that are now stuck in limbo inside warehouses across the regions. This covers an area of about 75 hectares, or enough to cover 101 football fields.  

This aid includes shelter, food and supplements to fight malnutrition, as well as water equipment, sanitation items and medicines that would be crucial to fight disease and Oxfam alone has over 110,000 items of humanitarian aid in one stockpile, including reusable water bottles and water tanks, hygiene, dignity and water testing kits, food parcels, soap, diapers, tubes and latrine pads.  

Oxfam is waiting for approval and entry permits, but the Israeli authorities have recently denied water and sanitation items and food parcels.  

Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam's policy officer in Palestine and Israel, says time is running out to prevent an epidemic in Gaza and the mass deaths that would inevitably follow.  

"The conditions Palestinians in Gaza are forced to endure have created a petri dish for disease. These are diseases that thrive where people lack water - clean or not - and are stuck in overcrowded, unhygienic environments with almost no food."

Bushra Khalidi, Policy Officer for Oxfam in Palestine and Israel

"There is a grim and deliberate inevitability to what Israel has created in Gaza. Every day that the siege continues and Israel stops aid, starvation becomes more widespread and deaths from entirely preventable diseases become an absolute certainty."

Bushra Khalidi, Policy Officer for Oxfam in Palestine and Israel

"As Gaza bakes in the summer sun and the hottest month of the year approaches, the urgency of ending Israel's siege grows. It is shameful that Israel has been allowed to besiege Gaza and create this disaster. Nothing short of full access to Gaza to deliver aid on a large scale can alleviate the conditions people have been forced to live in."

Bushra Khalidi, Policy Officer for Oxfam in Palestine and Israel

"Every day we wait for a ceasefire, more lives are lost to violence, hunger and disease. Palestinians in Gaza cannot wait another day for this hell to end. There must be a full ceasefire and all necessary aid must be allowed to enter Gaza through all border crossings so that Palestinians can finally start to recover and rebuild. "

Bushra Khalidi, Policy Officer for Oxfam in Palestine and Israel

More information 

Health data is taken from the Gaza Health Cluster's epidemiological data on WASH-related disease trends March-June 2025  

Calculation of aid pallets based on data from Palestinian logistics clusters  

Oxfam has aid awaiting approval in warehouses in Jordan and Egypt.