A few weeks ago, my father and I went to a market in southern Gaza to buy some fruit. We picked up a few kilos of apples, and my father took out his phone to pay through a banking app, as he usually does. He entered the transfer number, then told the vendor the payment had gone through.
We left the market thinking everything was settled. But a few minutes later, my father’s phone rang: The vendor was calling to say they hadn’t received the money. When I checked the banking app, I realized my father had entered the wrong transfer number and sent the money to someone else.
We paid the vendor again, and for me, the incident ended there. But in the weeks that followed, my father made the same mistake several more times. He could no longer make out the small numbers on his phone screen. He started asking me to read Internet recharge card numbers, text messages, and even bank transfer details out loud for him, because he struggled to read them himself.
Hassan Herzallah
My father wears an old pair of glasses with a broken frame to read on his phone.
That was when I noticed he had gone back to wearing an old pair of ready-made glasses with a broken frame, glasses he had stopped using years earlier. When I asked about the prescription glasses he used to wear, he told me his vision had changed and they no longer helped him see clearly.
One of the many humanitarian crises the people of Gaza are living through that rarely makes the news is a growing eye care crisis. Beyond the shortage of prescription lenses and glasses frames, treatment for eye diseases has become increasingly difficult. Many surgeries have been delayed as Israel continues to restrict the entry of essential medical supplies and much of Gaza’s health care system remains devastated. Nearly nine months after the so-called ceasefire, thousands of Palestinians in the enclave are still unable to access something as basic as a proper pair of glasses or the eye treatment they need, forcing many to live with deteriorating vision.
I took my father to two optical shops. At the first one, the optician checked his eyesight, parsed through the lenses he had in stock, then shook his head. “Your prescription isn’t available,” he told us. At the second shop, the wording was different, but the answer was the same: “If we get your prescription, we’ll call you.”
My father left the shop without a new pair of glasses. He was disappointed—not in the lack of a product, but in the feeling that he could no longer get through an ordinary day without struggling to see. With no other option, he continued to wear his old, broken glasses, even though they didn’t have the prescription he needed. Once again, he found himself relying on family members to read text messages, numbers, and other details on his phone.
My father’s experience is far from unique. It has become part of the daily reality in optical shops and eye clinics across Gaza. Ahmed Abdel Moneim, an optician in Gaza, told Al Jazeera in June that more than 95 percent of the lenses and supplies optical shops rely on today are from stock imported before the war, and around 60 percent of customers are unable to find lenses that match their prescriptions. Israel has designated many eye care supplies, including scanners, eye imaging machines, intraocular lenses, and ophthalmic optic equipment, as “dual use” and therefore highly regulated and often restricted from entering the occupied area.
“The shortage affects both lenses and frames,” says Abu Al-Walid, an optician in northern Gaza. “But lenses remain the biggest challenge because every patient needs a specific prescription, particularly those with nearsightedness or farsightedness.”
Al-Walid says he can help only about half of the customers who visit his shop; the rest leave empty-handed. He leaves them with the same phrase my father heard: “If we get your prescription, we’ll call you.”
The impact of the crisis is not limited to older people whose vision has worsened over time—it has also reached students who depend on glasses for their education. Twenty-two-year-old Mahmoud Al-Shaqra had been wearing prescription glasses for five years, replacing them whenever his eyesight changed. But in early September 2025, an Israeli strike on a house next to his family’s home in northern Gaza left his glasses beyond use.
Hassan Herzallah
Mahmoud Al-Shaqra’s prescription glasses were destroyed in an Israeli strike.
For the next twenty-four days, Al-Shaqra had no glasses. As words blurred, studying became nearly impossible, but his family could not afford a new pair, and even if they could, the right prescription likely would have been unavailable. He tried to wear his older brother’s glasses, but wearing the incorrect prescription caused him dizziness, headaches, and eye strain. Weeks after the family’s home was bombed, Al-Shaqra found a suitable pair with the help of a family friend; they cost around 600 shekels, or about $200 USD, three times what they had cost before the war.
“I mostly needed my glasses for studying and using my phone. Without them, even those simple things became difficult,” he says. “My glasses are part of my body.”
Abu Al-Walid says Al-Shaqra’s experience has become increasingly common. Many patients now rely on old pairs of glasses or borrow glasses from family members because they cannot obtain lenses that match their prescriptions. For children, delaying access to properly prescribed glasses can also lead to amblyopia, or “lazy eye,” which may result in permanent vision loss if left untreated.
But Gaza’s eye care crisis extends beyond prescription lenses. For many patients, the challenge is no longer finding a new pair of glasses—it is accessing treatment for eye diseases and injuries that could save what remains of their sight. Since the war began, more than 17,000 Palestinians have suffered partial eye injuries, and thousands need prosthetic eyes, some requiring prostheses for both eyes. Yet the medical resources needed to meet those needs remain critically scarce.
In June 2025, Shahd Samir was struck in the eye by shrapnel after an Israeli strike hit a tent near where she was standing with her sisters in Gaza City. She was first taken to Al-Shifa Hospital, then transferred to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, before eventually being referred to the Gaza Eye Hospital. Because of the severity of her injury, the shortage of medical resources, and the lack of specialized treatment accessible inside Gaza, doctors had no choice but to remove her eye. Samir’s providers told her she would need a prosthetic eye to protect the sensitive socket tissue and support surrounding facial muscles, yet the materials required to make one are unavailable in the enclave.
Unable to obtain a prosthetic, Samir paid more than 3,500 shekels, or about $1,170 USD, for a cosmetic scleral shell, a prosthetic shell designed to cover a damaged eye. Even so, she says it does not match her remaining eye or serve its intended purpose, and she is still waiting for permission to leave Gaza to complete her treatment. The piece of shrapnel that struck Shahd’s eye became lodged in her brain and remains there to this day.
“[The shell] was the only option available to me,” she says. “The doctors told me the treatment exists, but not in Gaza,” she says. “More than a year later, I’m still waiting for a chance to receive it.”
Dr. Hossam Dawood, director of the Gaza Eye Hospital, has said the hospital faces severe shortages of the materials needed for surgery, including those used in cataract and corneal transplant procedures, as well as the supplies required to produce prosthetic eyes. As a result, more than 4,000 eye surgeries are currently backlogged.
According to Dawood, many conditions that could have been treated before the war are now at risk of worsening because of Israel’s continued restrictions on medical supplies for eye care, alongside the extensive damage inflicted on hospitals and health care facilities across Gaza. As a result, he has said some patients are at risk of losing their eyesight.
“Procedures that used to be simple and routinely available before the war have become extremely difficult to provide,” Dawood told Al Ghad.
For many Palestinians, the choice is no longer between treatment options. It is between waiting for lenses that may never arrive, or surgery that may never come. My father is still waiting.
His phone number remains with more than one optical shop, in the hope that someone will call to say the lenses he needs have finally become available.
Until then, whenever he needs to read a message or enter a bank transfer number, he turns to me and says, “Read this number for me.”