Hello generous donors

My name is Ahmad Abd Elwahed from Gaza, a 3rd year dental student , I majored in dentistry after achieving a 98% average in high school , and I was so happy that I'll finally study my dream specialty Dentistry.

In the family I'm the only brother to my 5 sisters , as I am the individual who bears responsibility for the family , After my father grew up and was nearly 69 years old and He is Diabetic and a Blood Pressure patient and what made his condition worse was that he was injured during the war, So I have to do most of the family’s affairs, and take care of my old parents and my five sisters , who are :

Dr. Alma, has finished her internship year and is ready to practice her profession as a dentist

Ph. Marah, was very happy about her graduation in 2023, and she was very excited to begin her internship year

Samar, was preparing to finish her senior year

Lana, is in her final year of school, which is the most serious year at school

Meera, my youngest sister and the spoiled loved one of the family.

And of course, I had to take care of myself and my studies in dentistry, at AlAzhar University , which they horribly destroyed and faded my dreams and hopes for a bright future.

Alazhar university - Gaza:

For all of us in the family, our studies and work stopped, our dreams were scattered and faded, we no longer thought about the extent of our academic progress, we did not care about our future, as we did not know whether if there is tomorrow morning or not, we were only thinking about how to preserve the safety of our souls and for our bodies to remain whole and not to be interrupted into pieces!

We lost hope when we knew that everything we had in Gaza was bombed beyond repair, but then the worst news was that it was completely destroyed and reduced to ashes

For example, Our house in the tower was completely turned into ashes:

Our beautiful neighborhood before and after:

Also, unfortunately, our textile factory, which was my father’s source of income, no longer exists right now 

Our situation in Gaza - Rafah is worse than you expect. Especially after the Israeli occupation army decided to invade Rafah by ground from the Philadelphia Axis (which is several meters away from where I am now). And of course what you see on social media does not represent half of what our eyes see continuesly, and as they say, “who counts the blows is not the same as the one who receives them”.

Living in Gaza be like you are waiting, not knowing when your turn will come to be the next news, if you survive the missiles, you will die a thousand times over from the conditions you will live through ( starvation, skyrocketing prices, unclean water, air pollution, cold diseases, overcrowding and so on...) .

As for the suffering that we experienced and the scenes that our children saw, words cannot describe and the mind cannot believe.

Since our presence in Gaza, displacement from one house to another has become more like a weekly routine that I and my family do seeking for safety that we did not find in the entire city.

So there is no house left from our relatives’ houses, we took refuge in it, and also we spent a night in one of the schools (Al-Buraq School), considering that it contained a number of displaced people and might be less vulnerable to bombing, until our hopes were disappointed and we were bombed , and became a new massacre with about 60 martyr and a lot of severaly injured citizens, which caused my father to be injured in the head by shrapnel, which led to him losing a large part of his vision and his hearing, and this action also affected his balance, so he now needed an urgent operation that is difficult to perform in Gaza.

After we realized the failure of all attempts to escape inside Gaza City, and the sound of gunfire belts and shells falling on our homes, we were forced to head south, even though we did not know anyone in the south and there was no place to shelter us, but we were trying to keep our body intact.

We decided to flee to the south of the Strip, towards Rafah. This was under the threat of Israeli snipers and tanks and the sight of corpses in the streets, we arrived in the south and took refuge in tents, and after a short while, we met a friend who welcomed to host us in his very small old simple house , Which contains more than 5 families inside it. My sisters and my mother live in the very small room on the right, and in this small room (approximately 4*3 metres) they put all our belongings that we were displaced in and they sleep in it, and I, my father, and the men sleep in the second outer room, in which we also put our belongings

Despite all the suffering we are experiencing in Rafah, here we are watching in "the safe zone", genocides occur as we used to see in Gaza, Although they said that Rafah was the safest place, and we fled from our homes to go to Rafah, unfortunately we are still startled from our sleep by the sounds of clashes, bombing, and planes above us.

And even under more difficult conditions , (Aid doesn't allow to enter Gaza, overcrowding , winter cold , No safety, no peace,...) .

We're 100 years back , living like a primitive life, in era of the global development of technology.

For example:

We use firewood to burn fire for cooking, heating, or even a shower.

We use solar energy to charge our phones and light up at night by LED

We use the fort and bicycles as a means of transportation

You know what's sad? And very sad?

The innocent children of Gaza who are killed for no reason, and the children who survive the massacres, you must be sure that a large percentage of them suffer from diseases or psychological disorders because of the scenes they have seen since their young age, and we, as adults, can hardly bear seeing these scenes.

These are the children of our newly displaced neighbors in Rafah, Maram and Habiba .

I feel very sad for those children because of the fear, hunger and cold they have been experiencing since their childhood, but I try as much as possible to make them happy, buy them sweets and snacks that may satisfy their hunger and play with them to rid them of fear of what they see and hear everyday.

After the Israeli occupation army decided to invade Rafah by ground, I realized that the only way to escape from these massacres and disasters is to evacuate from Gaza, hoping that we will forget the massacres we witnessed and the news of the killing of our relatives and friends, and live according to our simplest right, which is peace. Unfortunately, this opportunity is related to time, as we do not know how long we will have the opportunity to escape from the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing before the enemy closes it.

This is an extremely urgent matter, and the longer the matter is delayed, the crossing may be closed and we will probably be the new massacre.

Travel costs from Gaza to Egypt :

- Crossing Egyptian borders: you have to pay (5,000$-8,000$) for every person in the family

So, (8×5000$) =40,000$ , Considering current evacuation fees and coordination expenses at the Egyptian border

- Passport fees: 800$ totally (100$/person for 8 family members)

- GoFundMe Fee: 2,000$ (Approximately 2.9%+0.30$ for each donation, covering the platform’s fee).

- And some extra living costs for couple of months (Including apartment rent, clothes , food , etc) : 10,000$.

The total is approximately : 55,000$

"I may divide the amount to make it easier to collect"

( Evacuation prices vary from one period to another, if travel costs decrease, The money that I will not use for travel, I will use as family allowance or as part of rebuilding our house and so on , So please be assured that your donation will reach me 100%).

PS: I have appointed my trusted friend Barbara Pourali as a beneficiary, This is due to the restrictions imposed by the GoFundMe, as I cannot withdraw money while I am in Gaza, so Barbara will withdraw the money and send it to me securely.

Honestly, we do not ask for help in this way, but the silent world forced us to do so in order to keep our souls alive, asking good people to help save our oppressed souls.

Finally, words cannot thank you enough for your help in changing our lives just to donate.

Please help us before it gets too late! Thank you for your donation whatever the amount, I appreciate you

Peace from a land that did not know peace ️♥️

My Instagram: @ahm3d_a1

Ahmad Abd Elwahed