A Year Into Ceasefire, Israel Still Bars Toilet Seats, Toys, and Hair Clips From Gaza

Dima Awad has a tent, a garage to move into, and no toilet seat.

The 48-year-old mother, displaced in Gaza City, paid rent on the garage roughly two weeks ago hoping to get her and her son out before winter rains return. She has not been able to move in. The garage has no bathroom, and a replacement toilet seat, an item Israel still bars or restricts from entering Gaza, now costs 1,500 to 2,000 shekels, or $486 to $648, according to her account to Middle East Eye. The rent itself is 600 shekels a month.

"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 said.

The toilet seat is one item on a list of ordinary household goods that Palestinians in Gaza say remain scarce or unavailable nearly a year after the October 2025 ceasefire took effect. The agreement required Israel to lift restrictions and facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid into the enclave. Aid workers describe the goods still being turned back at the crossings as a "ghost list," since Israel has not published a comprehensive update to its dual-use items classification since 2017, even as hundreds of items have reportedly been added to the restricted category since then.

The dual-use framework dates to the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza in 2007, under which construction materials, water and sewage pumps, electrical equipment, generators, medical equipment, wheelchairs and crutches were all classified as having potential military applications and barred or restricted accordingly.

Imad Sersawi, a 45-year-old father of five displaced from Shujaiya, said a single working lighter now sells for 90 shekels, about $29, and that his lighter is shared across his entire displacement camp for cooking fires. He said he has not bought his children toys since the war began, and that even now, toy shops are selling leftover prewar stock at markups he cannot afford, a small rubber ball running 100 shekels.

"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," Sersawi said.

Baidaa Othman, a Palestinian journalist, said she had to travel between two governorates to find a single hair claw clip, paying roughly ten times its original price once she located one.

Israel has not issued a public comment on the specific items named in this reporting. The restrictions on reconstruction materials, medicine and shelter supplies, which aid groups say remain extensive nearly a year into the ceasefire, are documented separately and remain in effect alongside the smaller items described here.