Gaza hospitals ration electricity as Israeli siege blocks generator oil, spare parts

• Gaza hospitals are rationing electricity as an Israeli siege blocks engine oil and spare parts needed to run generators.
• Nasser Hospital has one generator out of service and two more under strain, forcing doctors to rotate power between wards.
• Engine oil prices have surged more than twentyfold in six months, topping $1,300 per liter by late July.
• MSF says the restrictions amount to a deliberate policy of attrition that is crippling hospitals, water systems, and ambulances.
• Gaza’s Municipalities Union warns essential services are nearing total collapse nearly a year after the ceasefire took effect.

Hospitals across Gaza are rationing electricity as an ongoing Israeli siege blocks the import of engine oil and spare parts needed to run generators, putting thousands of patients at risk. The shortages have persisted despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that took effect in October 2025. Engine oil prices have soared more than twentyfold over the past six months, reaching over $1,300 per liter by late July, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF). On September 5, the Gaza Strip Municipalities Union warned that essential services are approaching “total collapse.”

Nasser Hospital rotates power between wards to keep patients alive

At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, one of Gaza’s largest functioning medical facilities, internal medicine specialist Dr. Ahmed al-Nabris told Reuters that fuel shortages have forced the hospital into an austerity plan that rotates power between buildings.

“Patients are in severe danger, because any power cut puts their lives at serious risk,” Nabris said. One of the hospital’s four generators is now out of service, and two of the remaining three are under strain. Shortages have forced technicians to stretch the interval between oil changes from every 250 operating hours to roughly 1,000. Nabris added that the hospital’s electrical system has been damaged repeatedly since an Israeli military raid in early 2024, which destroyed its solar power system and knocked out both its main and backup generators.

Fatima Abu Taima, a patient who suffers from pulmonary fibrosis, described waiting to be connected to a ventilator or nebulizer as power rotates between departments. “We keep waiting, counting down the seconds and minutes,” she said. “You have to wait for the electricity to come back.”

Gaza’s roughly 2 million residents have been without grid electricity since Israel launched its offensive following the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. Israel halted electricity supply and restricted fuel and oil imports, calling the measures a response to Hamas. Those restrictions remain in place even after the ceasefire.

MSF says restrictions amount to a deliberate policy of attrition

MSF said in an August statement that engine oil and spare-parts restrictions are undermining hospital generators, ambulances, water pumps and water trucks, pushing the local market price of oil up from roughly $3 a liter before the war. “What we are witnessing in Gaza is not a series of isolated shortages, it is a policy of attrition by design,” said Filipe Ribeiro, MSF’s head of mission in Palestine, adding that the policy “dismantle[s] the very systems people rely on to survive.”

On August 5, a generator failure at an MSF field hospital in Deir al-Balah left staff relying on a smaller backup, able to run the operating theater only for the most critical patients while x-ray service stopped and sterilization halted. MSF’s desalination operation has also been scaled back, cutting daily drinking-water output by roughly 40 percent and leaving tens of thousands without access. A July survey found nine in ten Gaza households facing moderate to high water insecurity.

Municipalities warn essential services are nearing collapse

The Gaza Strip Municipalities Union said the shortages threaten water wells, sewage stations, and the heavy machinery used to clear rubble and recover bodies, and that a lack of spare parts and tires has already disabled a number of its vehicles.

The crisis has also hit household electricity. Yasser Ashour, who sells power from private generators, said soaring fuel and parts costs have made his business increasingly difficult to sustain even as demand from medically vulnerable residents remains urgent. Alaa Al-Hourani, 65, who suffers from liver fibrosis, said he sometimes cannot afford electricity at all. “It is suffocating and agonizing, but there is nothing we can do. We have nothing but cardboard to fan ourselves,” he said.

A ceasefire on paper has done little to change conditions on the ground for ordinary Palestinians, who are left rationing electricity, medicine, and water nearly a year after the guns officially fell silent — raising the question of what, exactly, the agreement was meant to secure.

Sources for this article include:

TheCradle.co

Reuters.com

MSF.org