Toilet seats, toys and hair clips: The strangest items Israel still barred from Gaza - Middle East Eye

A toilet seat is all that stands between Dima Awad and moving out of her makeshift tent before winter.

The 48-year-old Palestinian mother has rented a small garage in western Gaza City and has already moved most of her belongings there.

But she cannot move in until she finds a toilet seat, something that has become increasingly difficult to find in Gaza. 

The basic item is among a range of essential goods that Israel continues to prevent from entering the besieged enclave.

“I paid the rent around 10 days ago, and I’ve been looking for a proper toilet at an affordable price for about two weeks now,” said Awad, who now lives with her only son after being separated from her husband, who travelled for treatment during the genocide.

“Of course, there is no way to find a new toilet seat at an affordable price right now. The second-hand ones are also unsuitable and still expensive.”

Due to their scarcity, toilet seats in Gaza now cost between 1,500 and 2,000 shekels ($486-648).

“I have done everything possible to move from my tent so that we wouldn’t get soaked by rainwater like we did last year. But the garage I found doesn’t have a toilet, so we have to build our own,” Awad told Middle East Eye.

“I consider the garage rent affordable after all the other unaffordable apartments I tried to rent. It costs around 600 shekels ($194) a month. But now I have to find a toilet that costs twice as much as the rent.”

Following the imposition of its blockade on the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel barred or restricted the entry of numerous items, classifying them as “dual-use” goods that could potentially be used for military purposes.

These included construction materials, water and sewage pumps, electrical equipment, generators, medical equipment, wheelchairs, crutches and other items needed for basic civilian life.

In the first two years of the genocide that began in October 2023, Israel sealed Gaza’s crossings and severely restricted the entry of commercial goods and humanitarian aid, including food, medicine, fuel and other essential supplies.

Under the October 2025 ceasefire agreement, Israel was required to lift its restrictions and facilitate the flow of international humanitarian aid into Gaza. 

Yet, nearly a year later, vast restrictions remain, including on medicine, shelter, reconstruction materials, and other essential and non-essential items.

A range of everyday civilian and humanitarian items continue to be denied entry under what aid workers have described as a “ghost list”.

The restrictions do not stop at goods with obvious humanitarian or reconstruction uses. They extend to seemingly mundane everyday items such as batteries, lighters and children’s toys.

“I have a lighter that the entire camp borrows whenever they need to light a fire for cooking,” said Imad Sersawi, a 45-year-old Palestinian displaced from the Shujaiya neighbourhood.

“Today, whoever has a lighter is considered rich because a single lighter costs 90 shekels ($29),” he added.

“You wouldn’t even find it easily in the markets because they haven’t been allowed in months.”

The father of five said more and more items are disappearing from Gaza’s markets, making everyday life increasingly uncertain.

“One day you find something; the next day it’s banned and disappears for God knows how long. Some things haven’t been allowed in for years,” he said.

“For example, I haven’t bought any toys for my children since the beginning of the genocide. Before the ceasefire agreement, they used to cry and ask for toys, and I would scold them for not understanding the situation and asking for unavailable things,” he explained.

“I used to tell them that once the war was over, I would buy them toys.” 

But even after the ceasefire agreement, Israel continued to bar toys from entering Gaza.

Today, toy shops are selling whatever remains from before the war at exorbitant prices.

“I cannot buy them a small rubber ball for 100 shekels [$32]. That amount would feed the entire family for two days,” Sersawi continued.

“People outside Gaza might say that basic necessities are missing and that we are focusing on these secondary things. But the fact is that we are being left without either the essentials or the non-essentials.”

The system governing these restrictions remains opaque.

Israel has not published a comprehensive, updated list of dual-use items since 2017, while hundreds of items have been added to the restrictions without being publicly listed.

In practice, aid organisations and traders have had to navigate a system in which goods can be rejected because they fall outside the humanitarian category or are deemed “dual-use”.

Everyday objects that would normally be taken for granted have also become difficult to find.

Baidaa Othman, a Palestinian journalist, had to travel between two governorates to find a hair claw clip, eventually paying around 10 times its original price.

“Now it’s not just about being able to get the basic necessities. It has reached a point where, when you want to buy something very simple, you have to go to extraordinary lengths to find it,” Othman told MEE.

“Even the simplest things as basic as a hair clip have become difficult to find. On top of all the basic necessities that are unavailable in Gaza, now the everyday things that no one would normally think twice about have become unavailable.”

In an Instagram video, Sojood Hasan, a Palestinian physiotherapist in Gaza, highlighted how restrictions on hair clips reflect a wider loss of everyday choices for women in the Strip.

“No one collapses because a hair clip is missing. But the feeling that your life is not in your hands can wear you down,” the young woman said.

For Othman, who is originally from Gaza City and remains displaced in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza after her home was destroyed, the need for such an ordinary item is inseparable from the daily realities of displacement.

“On top of the displacement and all the hardships we face, including having to cook with firewood, it’s only natural for women to want to put their hair up to keep it off their faces and necks in the heat. So it’s not a secondary item any more,” she said.

A clip that once cost around four shekels ($1.3) cost her 45 shekels ($14.5). 

“The Israeli occupation knows exactly what it is doing,” Othman said. 

“This is not random; it is a policy of making even the simplest things a struggle for Gazans.”