Viral footage of a Palestinian boy crying over his broken glasses has drawn attention to the impact of Israel’s genocidal blockade on Gaza. Seven-year-old Ayoub Junaid has a severe visual impairment, with eye doctors warning his parents that any falls or blows could cause additional damage to his retinas. He is in need of urgent surgery. “At the end of April, while walking with a family member along a road strewn with rubble, he fell and struck his face on the ground, breaking the glasses,” his mother Eman Junaid said. “He burst into tears, rolled on the ground and desperately tried to piece them back together. For Ayoub, those glasses were everything. Even with them, he cannot see clearly and often has to hold objects just inches from his face. But without them, he can barely move around at all.” Ayoub has since been given a new pair of glasses, but his case underlines the number of Gazan residents prevented from accessing basic eye care such as eye exams, corrective lenses and ophthalmic surgery by Israel’s blockade. Health officials in Gaza say eye care services have been decimated by the genocide, with Israeli missiles forcing the temporary shuttering of Gaza City’s Government Eye Hospital, the only public eye care centre in the territory.

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