Help Mo escape Gaza and finish medical training

My name is Mohammed Alhabil and I’m a final year Medical student at Al-Azhar university, Gaza. Only 6 months ago, I was sitting in the John Radcliffe hospital having been accepted onto a medical student elective by the University of Oxford. I trained in vascular surgery at the John Radcliffe hospital for one month, and Lower GI surgery at the Churchill hospital for another month.

I returned to Gaza in September 2023, after one of the greatest periods of my entire life in the UK, with renewed energy and passion to finish my final year at my medical school and pursue a training as a general surgeon in the U.K. and then later open my own clinic in Gaza. I was overflowing with ideas about how to pursue my dreams, but life always has a different plan.

I never thought my life would be turned upside down in a matter of moments. The war in Gaza crushed my dreams, I experienced the worst days of my life in that early October onslaught. Now I am stuck in this never ending horrific nightmare, awaiting death or hoping for a miracle to survive. It was just 3 weeks after I left the UK this war began and every aspect of my life has been turned upside down. I went from having dreams of becoming a surgeon, helping others and my community, to queuing for too little bread and queuing for water, which isn’t even clean to drink.

We have so little fuel that my mother has to cook on wood fire, we have no electricity, medications are in shortage, and we are being displaced from one home to another in the hopes of finding a safe place. We have even lost the simple joys of going to the supermarket to buy a biscuit or a chocolate, being able to browse the internet, or having water and bread whenever we are hungry.

Before this war, I lived in Khan Younis camp, a very densely populated area in southern Gaza Strip. Currently, I’m in my sister’s apartment in Rafah with so many of our relatives. My family and I were forcibly displaced from our house in Khan Younis about 75 days ago and our house suffered a irreparable damage, we have nowhere to return to.

My 55-year-old dad can’t stop thinking about it; he has been always telling us that he spent years building our house where we have a place to gather as a family at any time. Now it’s all gone; not just our house, but our memories and our safe and secure moments.

The threat of ground invasion of Rafah is truly keeping me in a constant state of stress and worry about myself and my family. It’s not just the fear of being killed that is pushing me to leave Gaza but also my father’s health and my siblings' future. My dad is a diabetic, hypertensive, COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) and FMF (Familial Mediterranean Fever) patient. He hasn’t been on his appropriate medications for a long period due to shortages, and the war prevented him from getting care. He urgently needs his lifelong medications, and I’m really worried about his health deteriorating.

My brother, Ismail, is a 3rd-year IT student at the University of Palestine, Gaza. He is one of the top students in his class and his tuition fees are covered by a scholarship from Reach Education Fund, an American organization that supports students in Palestine. Ismail has been working on himself so hard to become a front end developer. Just before this war, he was about to get a job offer through freelancing platforms, but it vanished as everything has in this war.

My youngest sister, Maryam, is a brilliant 14-year old child. She loves drawing and working on handicrafts in her spare time and wishes to become a teacher in the future. Maryam experienced multiple panic attacks during this war and is so terrified that she can’t be in a place without my mother. Maryam deserves a better life and conditions like any other child in this world.

My middle sister, Hala, is in the technical stream in high school and was about to go into college in September 2024. She was so excited to start her journey as a Graphic Designer, but she is now afraid and desperate that she has no future in Gaza as schools and universities have been wiped out.

My eldest sister, Alaa, is an architect and is raising a very beautiful daughter, Lana. Alaa and her husband, Mohammed, lost their source of income. Her husband is a Taxi driver and hasn’t been able to work since this war started due to scarcity of gasoline and risks of being killed. Their one-year old daughter has multiple needs that they can’t afford because of the current situation and they wish to escape to be able to take care of her and start a new life.

This horrible situation pushed me to organize this campaign and leave Gaza. I went on an interview with BBC radio Oxford when this war started, and on Good Morning Britain multiple times and many others to speak about the hardships and the challenges that we are enduring and ask people to put pressure on governments to ask Israel to stop its brutality. I am so sad that the truth is that the world governments don’t really care about us much, and this has left me no option but to evacuate Gaza, as I see no hope in sight.

To leave Gaza as a Palestinian requires paying for an Egyptian permit. This will be done via a direct payment to the Hala Travel Company using the funds from this fundraiser - and costs 5000$ for each person above 16 years of age and 2500$ for each person below 16 years of age. The total cost is 40,000$ ( 5000*7 + 2,500*2) -> £34000 including other costs. The money will be transferred from Dr. Saini to my uncle (who has managed to leave Gaza, but is not eligible to set up a GoFundMe) who can then pay directly in Egypt for our safe passage. The money is the price of our travel costs and a large fee required to put a name on the register of Palestinians with a right to enter Egypt via Rafah.

This is a huge amount of money that my family can’t afford. This is why I’m creating this fundraiser: to save the lives of my family and get to Egypt as soon as possible. We still have dreams but we are living in a nightmare and we are trying to escape.

Thank you to everyone who donates, or even just shares this fundraiser. I can't explain how grateful we all are that someone out there hears us and cares about our story

Afterword by Kiran Saini:

I am a trainee surgeon in Oxford and the Chairman of OxPal, a charity that has long helped medical students in Gaza receive quality medical education. Mo volunteered countless hours with us over the past 4 years to help his fellow students get educational opportunities and to improve medical care in Gaza.

I finally got to meet him in person when he was selected for a highly competitive elective placement in Oxford. He is such a kind, gentle and caring man. Hearing how much pain and suffering he is experiencing has been heartbreaking. That is why I have agreed to start this fundraiser to help him escape.

The full names of his family are:

Mohammed A. M. Alhabil

Rola I. H. Alhabil (mother)

Ali M. M. Habil (father)

Ismail A. M. Alhabil (brother)

Hala A. M. Alhabil (sister)

Maryam A. M. Alhabil (sister)

Alaa A. M. Alhabil (sister)

Mohamed I. A. Alhabil (brother in law)

Lana M. I. Alhabil (niece)

And I plan to get every penny you donate to them via his Uncle, who has managed to leave Gaza and obtain permanent residency in Canada. He will ensure every member of Mo's family can get a permit and leave.