Support a Palestinian family in Northern Gaza

Sayeid is deeply kind, caring, and unshakeable in their strength and faith, and I am blessed to call them my friend. Please read their story, donate what you can, and share this cause as widely as possible. All funds will be sent directly to Sayeid and their family. Free Palestine.

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My name is Sayeid Alhouseini. I am a 27 year old Palestinian from the war stuck besieged Gaza Strip, occupied territories of Palestine. I currently reside in Gaza City, Northern Gaza Strip with my mother and my brother. I was a high school exchange student in Sharon, Vermont, at the Sharon Academy for the school year 2012-2013. I spent a gap year in Istanbul, Turkey before heading to college in which I learned Turkish and then moved to Northfield, Minnesota to earn my bachelor’s degree in fine arts and social sciences at St. Olaf College, class of 2019. I was diagnosed with a chronic illness when I was 19 years old and a related complication caused me to become disabled at the age of 25 which gave me no option but to move back to Gaza in 2021. Just right after I moved back, Gaza was struck with an Israeli aggression that lasted for a couple of weeks which we survived by the grace of God. A while after the 2021 Israeli aggression, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had to juggle between taking care of my health, adapting to my disability and helping with my mother’s cancer treatment which included chemotherapy, a mastectomy and other cancer related treatments that she is still ongoing to this day. I was unemployed at the time but realized I needed to make living. Unfortunately I couldn’t utilize my bachelor’s degree and pursue art as a mean of earning money in Gaza so I decided to put my English language to use and become an English as a second language online tutor. I have been loving doing that for the past two years.

As you might know, Gaza has been undergoing an aggressive war of eradication since October 7th, 2023. Before Israel initiated a land invasion on Gaza by the end of that month, people in Gaza were asked to evacuate to Southern Gaza. Given my mother illness and my disability, we decided to have faith in God and stay at our apartment in Northern Gaza. Miraculously, the heated clashes in Northern Gaza have left us psychically unscathed but psychologically tremendously terrorized. Looking at how the conditions have worsened in Southern Gaza ever since in the days after made us realize that we had made the right decision by not evacuating our home.

To say that Northern Gaza is obliterated is an underestimation. I took a few short walks in my beloved hometown Gaza City when I felt safe to do so only to go back to my apartment filled with insurmountable grief wondering how I am going to live here if I ever make it alive after war. There were still dead bodies on the streets waiting to be properly buried. Destruction is everywhere, the infrastructure is nonexistent. Hospitals, clinics, schools, mosques, markets, stores, streets I used to lovingly walk are totally or partially destroyed. International regional officials are arguing about who is going to rebuild Gaza while people are still being killed in Gaza, how ironic! Mustn’t the war end first before you start talking about rebuilding Gaza? I wonder if my mom and I will be there to see that day.

To be completely frank, this fundraiser is more or less a shot in the dark. I don’t know how much this fundraiser is going to make, how exactly this money is going to help me or when I will be able to access it. Answers to these questions depend on when and how this war will end, the conditions of Gaza post war and most importantly if I will be alive or not at that time. This fundraiser is ultimately going to be a trust fund/financial safety net for two possible post war scenarios if my family and I make it out of war. If we don’t make it alive, I entrust my friend Jessica Chadwell to find a Palestinian from Gaza in need of the money when the war is over. However, I entrust in God that we will make it alive and my family and I will live more days on this earth experiencing His love for us day after day. The first scenario I am thinking of post war in that there is a presence of sustainable livelihood in Gaza in which I will need funds to help recover from household damages that we have sustained from the war. Such recovery would involved the purchase and setting up of a solar power unit for electricity. Electric power generators in Gaza City are completely destroyed. Electric poles and wires are not even there anymore. Water tanks, and pipes need to be bought and set up as well. A new water heater. Some broken windows and doors for the apartment need to be replaced. Lots of necessary renovations will be needed. This first scenario involves continuing to reside in Gaza post war which depends primarily on the recovery of the healthcare system. My mother and I will need lifelong health care that we are worryingly unsure how will be able to access after the war. After the war ends, if it ever does, the speed in which the healthcare system gets reestablished is detrimental to both my mother’s health condition and mine. If that takes a long time, my mom and I will be given no choice but to relocate to another country where we can access the health care we need. This is the second scenario that this fundraiser is set up for. This is also the scenario that my mom will try to fight hard given how rooted she is in the country her grandparents once had to leave as refugees back in 1948. But if this becomes a matter of life or death post war, I will strongly persuade her to make that decision.

The matter of relocating is definitely costly and if we were to undergo this kind of endeavor we would need large amounts of funds to help us settle down wherever God ends up taking us. This fundraiser with your gracious help will definitely make this possible. I haven’t been able to work for the past three months since the internet has been down in the area where I currently reside. I don’t even know when I will be able to work again. My mother hasn’t been able to earn her state income as well. We solely depend on the humble savings I managed to earn and save in the last two years of my work as an online tutor. I don’t even know why I am setting this up now since I don’t know when this war is going to end. There are more than 150 people being killed everyday by Israeli bombardments of Gaza and hundreds injured and I just keep my trust in God that my family and I will make it out of this manmade hell-on-earth alive. So, I guess starting this kind of initiative could foresee not only an end for this endless vicious cycle of violence but a possible ambitious one as well.