DaysofPal- As the Israeli occupation intensifies the blockade on the Gaza people, a severe shortage of cooking gas in Gaza has pushed many families to rely on burning wood, plastic, and other waste to prepare food, exposing mothers and children to dangerous smoke and toxic fumes.
Shortly before the sunset call to prayer during Ramadan, 34-year-old Islam Dardouna tends to a pot balanced over a makeshift stove fashioned from a battered metal can.
Pieces of wood and scraps of paper fuel the small fire beneath it, and thick smoke rises as she cooks, leaving her face and clothes stained with soot.
Dardouna, who holds an asthma inhaler in one hand while preparing food for her three children, says the constant exposure to smoke has severely damaged her health.
“We use the fire for everything, heating water and cooking meals. It has completely ruined my health,” she explains, pointing to her chest.
Originally from Jabalia in northern Gaza, Dardouna has been displaced since the start of the Israeli genocidal war on the territory in October 2023.
After their home was destroyed about a year and a half ago, she, her husband Muath, and their children moved repeatedly before settling in a displacement camp in Sheikh Ajleen, west of Gaza City.
For Dardouna, the daily struggle to cook over open flames is one of the harshest consequences of the war.
“Our life has become a constant search for wood and things we never imagined we would need,” she says.
“There is no cooking gas and no gas cylinders anymore.” She added.
Her situation is made worse by chronic asthma and chest allergies, which she says began during the 2008 Israeli war on Gaza after she inhaled smoke from a phosphorus bomb that struck her home.
While her condition improved in the years that followed, the current war has caused it to deteriorate significantly.
Earlier this year, doctors discovered airway obstruction and masses in her lungs, and after being hospitalized for several days due to oxygen deprivation, she was prescribed an oxygen cylinder, but she cannot afford it.
Dardouna’s struggle reflects a wider crisis across Gaza, where cooking gas has remained in critically short supply since the war began.
Even after a ceasefire took effect in October, allowing limited amounts of fuel and essential goods into the territory, supplies have remained far below the population’s needs.
According to United Nations data, the small quantities of cooking gas entering Gaza meet less than three percent of actual demand.
As a result, about 54.5 percent of households now rely on firewood for cooking, while about 43% burn waste or plastic. Only roughly 1.5 percent of families still have access to cooking gas.
Humanitarian organizations warn that these unsafe methods expose residents to harmful smoke and toxic chemicals, posing serious risks to both health and the environment.
The crisis has become even more difficult during the holy month of Ramadan, when families must prepare both pre-dawn suhoor meals and iftar meals at sunset.
Firewood has grown increasingly expensive, and lighting a fire before dawn is often impossible due to darkness, bad weather, or lack of fuel.
Muath Dardouna says the family frequently skips suhoor because starting a fire in the early hours is too difficult. Even after breaking their fast, simple comforts such as a cup of tea or coffee are often out of reach.
“Every part of our lives is suffering; fetching water is suffering. Cooking is suffering. Even going to the bathroom is suffering. We are exhausted,” he says.
A former psychosocial support worker for children, Muath, says it hurts him to see his children fasting without a proper meal before dawn.
He describes cooking gas as a dream, recalling how the family once celebrated receiving a gas cylinder months ago, only to realize they no longer had a stove to use it.
“Displacement and war took everything from us. We would accept the simplest life in tents, but there is no heating, no gas, and no light. It feels like living in open graves,” he says.
The General Petroleum Authority in Gaza has warned that the continued halt in gas supplies could have catastrophic consequences for more than two million residents.
Officials say the territory already faced a shortage of around 70 percent of its gas needs even after the ceasefire announcement.
Authorities warn that the complete suspension of gas deliveries threatens both food security and public health, particularly during Ramadan, and have called on international mediators to intervene to ensure fuel supplies reach the enclave.
Across Gaza, many families now depend on ready-made meals from aid groups and charity kitchens because cooking has become so difficult.
Yet even when food arrives hours before iftar, reheating it can be another challenge.
Nearby, 26-year-old Amani Aed al-Bashleqi sits beside a fire where her husband stirs a pot of food.
She says meals cooked over fire taste flavorless, not because of the cooking method but because exhaustion and hardship overshadow every bite.
The smoke also causes severe headaches and breathing problems among women in the camp, she says.
At times, she cannot even boil water for her seven-month-old baby’s milk because lighting a fire is too difficult.
In another tent, Iman Junaid, a mother of six displaced from Jabalia, burns empty plastic bottles to keep her cooking fire going.
Piles of collected plastic sit nearby, gathered because firewood has become too expensive.
Junaid says she knows the health risks of burning plastic, but has no alternative. Her one-year-old daughter frequently complains of chest pain from inhaling the smoke.
“Our life has become collecting plastic and burning it,” she says.
“Gas has become almost impossible to find; we’ve forgotten what it’s like.” She added.
Despite repeated promises that cooking gas would enter Gaza after the ceasefire, she says little has changed.
For Dardouna, however, the solution goes beyond simply allowing gas into the territory. What people truly need, she says, is the restoration of basic living conditions.
“Let gas enter. Let goods enter at reasonable prices; let the necessities of a normal life return,” she says.
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