Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Just before the call to the sunset prayer, Islam Dardouna stretches her hand toward a pot hanging over a makeshift stove made from a battered metal can, scraps of paper and pieces of wood fueling the fire beneath it.
Then she pauses. She turns away with a tongue of smoke. Her face covered in a thin layer of soot and her clothes drenched in the scent of smoke, she takes a deep breath but doesn’t immediately lift the lid.
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In her right hand, Dardouna holds an asthma inhaler, like a ladle or tongs. With her other hand, she tries to prepare food for her three children.
“I can’t stand the fire anymore,” 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.
Dardauna has been displaced from Jabalia in northern Gaza since Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the territory began in October 2023.
She now lives with her husband – 37-year-old Muwat Dardouna – and their children in Sheikh Azleen, west of Gaza City.
His house was destroyed a year and a half ago. Since then, the family moved from place to place until they finally settled in this camp with other displaced families.
Everything changed after the war started. But for Dardouna, cooking every day on an open fire in the background of cooking gas and fuel is worse.
“Our whole life is a struggle now, we never imagined that one day we would need wood and materials,” he says. “No cooking gas and no gas cylinders. We lost everything during the relocation.”
She suffers from asthma and chronic chest allergies, which she says began in 2008 when she inhaled fumes from a phosphorus bomb that fell on her home during Israel’s war on Gaza, complicating the situation. Her situation improved over the years, but has deteriorated dramatically during the current war.
“I developed an airway obstruction and recently found masses in my lungs,” said Dardouna, who was hospitalized for six days in January after suffering from a lack of oxygen.
“The doctor prescribed me an oxygen cylinder,” she says quietly. “But unfortunately, I can’t afford it.”
Chronic deficiency
Like many others across Gaza, Dardouna is struggling amid chronic shortages of cooking gas and fuel that have persisted since the start of the war.
Supplies have been severely limited even after a “ceasefire” took effect in October, which included provisions allowing access to fuel and essential goods into the territory.
However, according to official sources from Gaza and United Nations agencies, the quantities that have entered since then are far below the actual needs of the population.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says the availability of cooking gas in Gaza is “critically restricted”, with limited quantities entering the territory below the required three percent.
As a result, many families had to rely on alternative and often dangerous cooking methods.
UN data indicates that about 54.5 percent of households depend on firewood for cooking, approximately 43 percent burn waste or plastic, and only 1.5 percent are able to cook with gas.
Humanitarian groups warn that such unsafe alternatives pose risks to people’s health and the environment due to long-term exposure to fumes and toxic fumes from burning plastic and other waste.
Amidst these conditions, cooking over open fires made of wood, scrap materials or plastic is a daily reality in displacement camps and neighborhoods across Gaza..
The crisis has intensified during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when families must prepare the Suhoor meal before their daily fast, followed by the Iftar meal.
Firewood is expensive, daily budget required. Lighting a fire before dawn is difficult due to lack of light and inclement weather, so the family often skips the early morning meal altogether.
“Today, for example, it’s raining and windy. I couldn’t light a fire,” said Darduna’s husband Muath, who is helping with the daily cooking.
“Even when we break our fast, we want to drink a cup of tea or coffee afterwards, but we can’t, because re-lighting the fire is another struggle.”
A former psychosocial support worker for children, Muwat says it pains her to see her children fasting without suhoor.
“Literally every detail of our lives suffers,” he says. “Fetching water is suffering. Cooking is suffering. Even going to the bathroom is suffering. We are really tired,” she said.
“Our lives are covered in soot,” says Muwat, pointing to the black smoke stains left by the fire.
He describes gas as “one of our dreams”, recalling that “it felt like Eid” when the family got the gas cylinder a few months ago. “But there is no stove to use it, so many families are like us,” he said.
“We are living on the brink of nothing. Displacement and war have robbed us of everything,” he adds. “We are willing to live in tents with simple rights. But there is no heating, gas, light. It feels like we are living in open graves on earth.”
Serious consequences
In a statement on Wednesday, Gaza’s General Petroleum Authority warned of the “catastrophic and dangerous consequences of the continued interruption of 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.
Gaza is already facing a shortfall of about 70 percent of its real gas needs, compared to the quantities that entered after the declaration of a “ceasefire,” the authority said.
“A complete suspension of gas supplies puts the Gaza Strip before a disaster that threatens food and health security”, especially during Ramadan.
The authority said preventing gas from entering the enclave was a “clear violation of ceasefire understandings”, calling on mediators and international actors to intervene urgently to ensure a regular flow of cooking gas to Gaza.
Across Gaza, many families now rely on aid distributions and ready-prepared meals from charity kitchens due to economic collapse and difficulty cooking.
“Even when the food is ready before iftar, heating it becomes another problem,” says Muwat.
The desperation of daily survival drives Mu’ath to the edge.
“Now as a father, I can’t provide the basics,” he says. “Imagine my son just wants a cup of tea … even a little wind can stop him from doing that.”
‘The fire will suffocate you’
In a nearby tent, 26-year-old Amani Aed al-Bashleki sits watching food cook over an open fire for iftar while her husband stirs the pot.
He said that cooking over fire makes food taste “off-flavored” – not because the taste changes, but because “exhaustion and suffering are 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-Bashleki says the smoke causes severe headaches and health problems.
“Fire suffocates you. All the women in the camp face 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 put 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 unboiled water, even though I know it’s not healthy, what can I do?”
Nearby, Iman Junaid, 34, who moved from Jabalia to western Gaza City, sits in front of a fire with her husband Jihad, 36, preparing food.
Junaid blows on the fire as she pushes an empty plastic oil bottle down the fire.
Behind them are piled bags full of plastic bottles. The family has collected them to put out the fire as cooking gas has not been available for months.
A mother of six, Junaid is aware of the health risks of burning plastic, but says there is “no other option”.
“My little daughter is one year old, and her chest always hurts from inhaling smoke,” she says. “Our lives are collecting and burning plastic and nylon.”
“When the price of wood is going up, we wish we could find wood now. Gas is impossible … we forgot about it.”
There were many promises that gas would enter Gaza after the “ceasefire,” but “nothing happened,” he said.
For Dardouna, the solution is not just to bring cooking gas to Gaza. “What we need is for life to be possible again,” he says.
“Let gas come in. Let goods come in at reasonable prices. Let basic necessities for normal life.”
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