Gaza City, the Gaza Strip – Shortly before the call to sunset prayer, Islam Dardouna stretches her hand towards a pot hanging over a makeshift stove fashioned from a battered metal can, with scraps of paper and pieces of wood feeding the fire beneath it.
Then she pauses. She turns her face away from the rising tongues of smoke. Her face stained with a thin layer of soot and her clothes steeped in the lingering smell of fumes, she takes a deep breath but does not immediately lift the lid.
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In her right hand, Dardouna holds an asthma inhaler as though it were a ladle or tongs. With her other hand, she tries to prepare food for her three children.
“I can no longer tolerate the fire at all,” the 34-year-old says in a strained voice as she raises the inhaler to her mouth.
“We heat water on it, cook on it … everything. It completely destroyed my health,” she said, pointing to her chest.
Dardouna has been displaced from Jabalia in northern Gaza since the start of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the territory in October 2023.
She now lives with her husband – 37-year-old Muath Dardouna – and their children in Sheikh Ajleen, west of Gaza City.
A year and a half ago, their home was destroyed. Since then, the family has moved from place to place until they eventually settled in this camp alongside other displaced families.
Everything changed after the war began. But for Dardouna, having to cook daily over an open fire in the face of cooking gas and fuel ranks among the worst.
“Our entire life now is a struggle, searching for wood and things we never imagined we would need one day,” she says. “There is no cooking gas and no gas cylinders. We lost all of that during displacement.”
What makes the situation even harder is that she suffers from asthma and chronic chest allergies, conditions she says began during Israel’s 2008 war on Gaza when she inhaled the smoke of a phosphorus bomb that dropped on her house. Her situation improved over the years, but has dramatically worsened during the current war.
“I developed airway obstruction, and recently there were masses found in my lungs,” said Dardouna, who in January was hospitalised for six days after suffering from oxygen shortage.
“The doctors prescribed an oxygen cylinder for me,” she says, quietly. “But unfortunately, I cannot afford it.”
A prolonged shortage
Like so many others across Gaza, Dardouna is struggling amid a prolonged shortage of cooking gas and fuel that has persisted since the start of the war.
Supplies have remained severely limited even after a “ceasefire” came into effect in October that included provisions allowing the entry of fuel and essential goods into the territory.
However, the quantities that have entered since then remain far below the population’s actual needs, according to official sources in Gaza and United Nations agencies.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says the availability of cooking gas in Gaza remains “critically constrained”, with the limited quantities entering the territory covering less than three percent of what is required.
As a result, many families have been forced to rely on alternative and often hazardous cooking methods.
UN data indicates that about 54.5 percent of households rely on firewood for cooking, roughly 43 percent burn waste or plastic, and only around 1.5 percent are able to cook with gas.
Humanitarian groups warn that such unsafe alternatives endanger people’s health and the environment due to prolonged exposure to smoke and toxic fumes produced by burning plastic and other waste.
Amid these conditions, cooking over open fires made from wood, scrap materials or plastic has become a daily reality across displacement camps and neighbourhoods throughout Gaza.
The crisis has intensified during the Muslim holy month Ramadan, when families must prepare both suhoor meals before their daily fast and iftar meals afterwards.
Firewood has become expensive, requiring a daily budget. Lighting the fire before dawn is also often difficult due to the lack of lighting and unfavourable weather conditions, so the family often skips the pre-dawn meal entirely.
“Today, for example, it’s raining and windy. I couldn’t light the fire,” said Darduna’s husband, Muath, who is also helping out with the daily cooking.
“Even when we break our fast, we wish we could drink a cup of tea or coffee afterwards, but we can’t, because lighting the fire again is another struggle.”
A former psychosocial support worker for children, Muath says it pains him to see his children fasting without suhoor.
“Every detail of our lives is literally suffering,” he says. “Fetching water is suffering. Cooking is suffering. Even going to the bathroom is suffering. We are truly exhausted,” he added.
“Our lives are covered in soot,” Muath says, pointing to the black smoke stains left by the fire.
He describes gas as “one of our dreams”, recalling how “it felt like Eid day” when the family got a gas cylinder a few months ago. “But we don’t even have the stove to use it, and many families are like us,” he said.
“We are living on the edge of nothing. Displacement and war stripped us of everything,” he adds. “We are willing to live with the simplest rights in tents. But there is no heating, no gas, no lighting. It feels like we are living in open graves on Earth.”
Serious implications
In a statement on Wednesday, the General Petroleum Authority in Gaza warned of the “catastrophic and dangerous consequences of the continued halt in cooking gas supplies” to the territory, stressing that the crisis “directly affects the lives of more than two million residents” amid already dire humanitarian conditions.
The authority said Gaza had already been facing a shortfall of about 70 percent of its actual gas needs compared with the quantities that entered after the “ceasefire” announcement.
It added that the “complete suspension of gas supplies places the Gaza Strip before a looming disaster that threatens food and health security”, particularly during Ramadan.
The authority also said that preventing gas from entering the enclave constitutes a “clear violation of the ceasefire understandings”, calling on mediators and international actors to intervene urgently to ensure the regular flow of cooking gas into Gaza.
Across Gaza, many families now rely on ready-made meals from aid distributions and charity kitchens because of economic collapse and the difficulty of cooking.
“Even when food arrives ready hours before iftar,” Muath says, “heating it becomes another problem.”
The frustration of daily survival pushes Muath to the brink.
“As a father now, I cannot even provide the most basic things,” he says. “Imagine my son simply wants a cup of tea … even a little wind can stop me from making it.”
‘The fire suffocates you’
In a nearby tent, Amani Aed al-Bashleqi, 26, sits watching food being cooked over an open fire for iftar while her husband stirs the pot.
She said cooking on fire makes food taste “flavourless” – not because the taste changes, but because “exhaustion and suffering have become part of every bite”.
“We start cooking early so we can finish by iftar, and after breaking the fast, my husband and I are completely exhausted and covered in soot.”
Like Dardouna, al-Bashleqi says the smoke causes severe headaches and health problems.
“The fire suffocates you. All the women in the camp suffer health problems from cooking on fire,” she says. “But we have no choice.”
She has a seven-month-old baby, and her biggest worry is boiling water for his milk.
“Sometimes I boil water and keep it in a borrowed thermos, but I don’t always have one,” she says. “And sometimes when he wakes up at night, I mix the milk with water without boiling it, even though I know that’s not healthy. But what can I do?”
Nearby, Iman Junaid, 34, displaced from Jabalia to western Gaza City, sits with her husband Jihad, 36, in front of the fire preparing food.
Junaid blows on the flames while she pushes an empty plastic oil bottle under the fire.
Behind them, bags full of plastic bottles are piled up. The family collected them to fuel the fire because cooking gas has been unavailable for months.
A mother of six, Junaid says she knows the health dangers of burning plastic, but has “no other choice”.
“My little daughter is one year old, and her chest always hurts because she inhales the smoke,” she says. “Our life is collecting and burning plastic and nylon.”
“With the price of wood rising, we now wish we could even find wood. Gas has become almost impossible … we’ve forgotten it.”
She said there were many promises that gas would enter Gaza after the “ceasefire”, but “nothing happened”.
For Dardounah, the solution is not simply bringing cooking gas into Gaza. “What we need is for life to become possible again,” she says.
“Let gas enter. Let goods enter at reasonable prices. Let there be basic necessities for a normal life.”
