Help a family in Gaza survive

In March 2023, we met Ameer Ahmed’s family in Beit Hanoun, in the north of Gaza. Since October, the Ahmed family has endured relentless Israeli bombardments that have destroyed their home. Displaced many times over the past months, they have witnessed unimaginable suffering and destruction.

This is their story

My name is Ameer Ibrahim Saeed Ahmad, I am 34 years old. I used to work in archeological restoration before October. But I had to escape with my family from the north of Gaza because of the war. I want to leave Gaza because there is no food, shelter, treatment, or education, and diseases are spreading quickly, including a skin disease my daughter is suffering from and has no treatment for, along with polio. I live in constant fear that my children will die, either from the bombings, or diseases. And I have no money to buy anything for my family.

For a while I worked with the Red Crescent as a volunteer, we would go with an ambulance to the places that were bombed. I saw body parts of children, women, and the elderly. You cannot imagine it! I would find the arm in one place, the body in another, the head in another. It was very difficult. One time we went to a house that had been bombed, and the only survivor was an eight-year-old. His family was killed and he was badly injured. It was a harrowing scene for me. How can a child survive without parents and siblings, cousins, with no one?

The bombings were really hard on us - air bombardment, ground bombardment. And we would see ambulances get hit and our colleagues killed. It broke us.

As much as I would like to tell you about what we are experiencing, I wouldn’t be able to describe my feelings. We are in a terrible state, we need mental health support after 10 months of war on Gaza, we’re living a very, very hard life. You cannot imagine what we’re living. So one just wants to be somewhere safe, to be able to think about the future of his children and his wife and his own life.

Ameer and his family can no longer bear the inhumane conditions in tents, the lack of food, clean water or basic needs, the diseases spreading and the constant threat of death as Israel continues its genocidal attack on Gaza. Since Gazans cannot access GoFundMe campaigns themselves, the family reached out to ask for help to fundraise to help them survive the horrors in Gaza.

Before May, the only way out of Gaza was to pay exorbitant "coordination" fees to the Egyptian agency Hala, which charged approximately $5000 for adults and $2500 for children. But since Israeli forces invaded Rafah and closed the land crossing with Egypt, Palestinians haven’t been allowed to pass through. It is uncertain when the crossing will open again, but the family is still fundraising to pay the coordination fees, hoping they will be able to leave when the border opens again.

The family of five— Ameer, his wife Sonia, and their children Joan (8), Watin (5), and Hamza (2) —need about $17,500 to cover these fees, and need additional funds to cover their living expenses. If the family is unable to leave Gaza, the donations will be used to support the family's basic needs - food, water and medicine - and their attempts to rebuild their lives.

Any donation, no matter how small, will give the family a glimmer of hope in all this darkness.

The funds will be received by HuBB - Humans Before Borders, a collective based in Portugal, and transferred to the Ahmed family via their relatives who are living abroad.