Help Nurse Maha's Family Rebuild Their Future

Dear World,

My name is Maha, a Palestinian nurse living in Gaza City. I am reaching out for support to help my family leave Gaza and live in peace. I have worked in hospitals and clinics in Gaza for nearly 150 days and witnessed the deaths of hundreds of innocent children and women and thousands of injuries. I worked hard in the emergency department, and several times we had to evacuate our home after enemy forces invaded.

After several nights of heavy bombing on Nuseirat, we evacuated our home and took refuge in residential refugee camps in the south. For months, we have had no electricity or fuel and have been struggling to secure essentials like diapers and milk for our two-and-a-half-year-old son, Nour. We lived in the now destroyed neighborhood of Gaza. We got engaged in 2020, built our dream apartment in 2020, and got married months later in 2021. Our beautiful child, Nour, was born in September 2021, two years before the war in Gaza strip, my son has witnessed two wars so far at the age of two and a half years.

He did not receive the health care that any child in any part of the world would have, including access to milk, diapers or vaccines. Because of the siege of the city, he did not receive his standard vaccination schedule, leaving him vulnerable to contracting infectious diseases in this polluted environment.

My family also lives in Nuseirat camp, and they were displaced under fire and did not have anything with them. They were forced to leave the city and head south where they had no one and nowhere to stay after the IDF destroyed our family home, leaving nothing but ashes. Our memories, our money, our comic books, and the corners in which we used to sit were destroyed.

Now, we have no home or income as we lost our sources of income in Gaza and online jobs due to internet problems. We are being shot and bombed, as there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip. We struggled to obtain food, water and diapers for our children, and were sometimes forced to consume non-potable water, which caused severe gastroenteritis and other health problems.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about our circumstances. Palestinian voices are often silenced, making it difficult to raise awareness of our situation and seek support. Having a safe, supportive, non-judgmental community is vital to us.

On behalf of my family, I sincerely and deeply ask all good people to help us leave the most dangerous place in the world, start a new life and continue my specialized medical training. The conditions, risks and hardships are unimaginable, and time is extremely sensitive, which means it can cause serious health problems and cost lives.

The money for this fundraiser will be kept in trust by my cousin, Zakher Hamad, in New York City, until we are able to reach Egypt and begin rebuilding our lives. We hope to be able to receive assistance for groceries, but are reliant on nonprofits within Gaza for now. Any assistance you can provide for us now will be much appreciated by us in the future.