Support my family in Gaza, Palestine

Hi. My name is Sarah Ali. I’m a Palestinian from Gaza currently doing a PhD at the University of Cambridge.

I am raising funds to help my family stay and survive in Gaza. They have been living under israeli bombardment and blockade for the past six months. Like the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza, my family do not have the practical and financial means to leave the Gaza Strip safely. While israeli bombs are forcibly displacing Palestinians from their homes, corrupt Egyptian officials are making money off Palestinians fleeing genocide. My family find themselves caught between horrible realities, all of which horrifying. They do not want to leave Gaza, but they want to be able to survive with some dignity. Hence this campaign.

My family in Gaza includes my mother, my brother, my three sisters, and their small families. My siblings are all married with children. I have three nieces and seven nephews: the oldest is 15 years old, the youngest 11 months old. Except for my eldest sister and her family, who have been displaced from Gaza City and are now living in a shelter in south Gaza, the rest of my family are all in Jabalya, North Gaza. Although nowhere in the entire Gaza Strip is safe from israeli bombs, people in Gaza City and North Gaza have particularly been starved as israel continues to restrict the entry of humanitarian aid into the north. Prices of basic things like flour and milk have skyrocketed. The money collected in this fundraiser will support my mother, my brother and three sisters, and their small families (9 adults and 10 children).

My mother, Ayda, is the light of our family. She is a retired teacher of Arabic language and literature, a loving mother and grandmother. Since October, my mother lost eight family members, including her brother Ahmed.

My father passed away in Gaza in 2022. I wasn’t able to go to his funeral or be with my family because of the siege imposed on Gaza. The cemetery where he is buried was desecrated by israeli tanks and bulldozers during the ground invasion of North Gaza. My father spent the last twenty years of his life nurturing olive trees on our piece of land, which is located near the ‘buffer zone’, on the north-east border between Gaza and israel. The olive trees my late grandfather planted were repeatedly damaged by invading israeli soldiers as our land was bulldozed in 2009, 2014, and again in 2023. This is an ongoing loss of a major source of family income (olive oil).

My eldest sister, Mai, is an architect and a talented poet. My brother-in-law, Haytham, is a civil engineer. Together they have three beautiful children: Hashem, Haya, and Zainah. Mai was preparing to start her PhD in architecture in Malaysia just before the onslaught began. She lost her flat in an israeli airstrike on Tal Al-Hawa, southwest Gaza City, which reduced the entire residential tower where she lived into rubble. Mai and Haytham have saved for this home for 18 years. Since October, Mai and her family have been displaced four times and are now living in a displacement shelter, with limited access to food and no access to healthcare.

Heba is my second sister; she is a brilliant computer scientist and works in the Ministry of Education in North Gaza. Her husband, Eyad, is a geography teacher. Their little daughter, Sarah, was born only a few months before the start of the genocide. Heba’s house was also completely destroyed in an israeli airstrike in Jabalya, north Gaza. Although she and her small family survived this bombing with minor wounds, Heba’s husband was later severely injured in another airstrike on his relatives’ house. My brother-in-law lost vision in both eyes, and the entire left side of his body has severe burns. His mother, brother, and four nieces were killed in the same airstrike. Although Eyad has an official medical referral to travel for treatment, he has not been able to travel yet. And the fact that he is stuck in North Gaza makes transferring him to the Rafah Border even more complicated. For Heba and Eyad, providing even the most basic necessities for baby Sarah, like milk and diapers, has become difficult and extremely expensive.

Next is my sister Mariam and her husband Omar. Mariam is an UNRWA school teacher (who started a coding club for her students who won several coding contests in Gaza), and her husband Omar is a social worker. They have two sons: Yusuf and Anas. Mariam’s house was severely damaged in October and is currently unliveable. Mariam has both Addison's disease and asthma, and because israel continues to block cooking gas, using firewood to cook for the past six months has made Mariam's asthma much worse. The cost of her medications has tripled.

My brother Abdullah and his wife Tamam are both medical technicians. They have four little sons: Mohammed, Adam, Hamza, and Yahya. My brother was injured by israeli shelling in December. He was filling the water tank on the rooftop of our house when he was directly targeted; he now has shrapnel wounds in his ear, jaw, and chest. As dedicated healthcare workers, and since the beginning of the israeli assault, my brother and his wife have not stopped working at hospitals in North Gaza (except briefly when my brother was wounded), even as they saw israeli forces bomb, besiege, and attack these hospitals one after the other. Last week, Tamam’s brother, a paramedic and a nurse, was killed by an israeli airstrike while he was helping the wounded in Beit Hanoun, North Gaza.

Despite the 17-year israeli-egyptian blockade on Gaza, my siblings and their spouses always worked hard to put food on the table for their children. And they did so with such love and care and kindness. Today, of these eight adults who had full-time jobs before October, only one has been paid regularly during the past six months. The rest have either been paid twice over six months, or have lost their jobs and not been paid any salary at all. Now going into the seventh month of the genocide, my siblings and their families have run out of any savings they had. With the destruction of three houses, the loss of the family business of olive trees, and the lack of any regular income through day jobs, it is impossible for my family to carry on without your support.

The funds collected will be spent on basic needs to survive for as long as the genocide continues: food, water, rent, medicine, clothes, transport, and home schooling. If a ceasefire is reached soon and my family members are able to resume work in the next few months, any excess of the money raised in this campaign will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).

With deep gratitude,

Sarah