Help a family to evacuate from Gaza

Hayam and Kamal need help to leave Gaza with their families

(This page has been updated on May 3 to include the family of Kamal’s sister, Hayam)

I share with you Hayam’s last vocal message (April 28,2024). It says everything:

“I hope you are fine, and your beloved are fine. I want to ask you if you can help us to leave Gaza to any safe place in the world. If you know someone who can help us to put our names, me and my family, my brother, his wife and four children, who live in a tent in Rafah.

I miss my mom. She was injured and then she died because we didn’t find medical care for her. I miss one of my brothers who has been killed in an airstrike when he was in his house. I miss my home, my colleagues, my neighbors, my memories. I miss everything. And even my brother who is currently in Rafah; he lost his home, everything, and he didn’t find any place to live, and now he lives with his family in a tent.

You know the situation here in Gaza; we have no future. Everything is destroyed. There is no safe place. I am standing in the street to find internet and talk to you.

We have been living without food for weeks. We feel hungry. We try to live by cooking grass and some plants, which grow in spring.

I want to leave Gaza. I stand here, talking, and I see everything destroyed around me. There is no future. There are no hospitals, no universities, no markets, no future, there is nothing. I don’t like to say that, but this is the situation we live in.

We need money to cross the Egyptian border in Rafah and go to any place in the world. And we want to find a new life, a new future, for me and my kinds.

Please can you help us? Thank you, take care. Hayam.”

I got to know Hayam, an excellent archaeologist, and Kamal, her brother, in 2013 when I was in Gaza for an archaeological project.

Hayam Ihssan Ibrahim Albittar and her brother Kamal already lost their mother and their brother in the Israeli airstrikes on their respective homes. Kamal and Heiam’s mother is one of this “preventable death” mentioned by Medico International Report, recently published. Heiam’s entire neighborhood in Gaza city is destroyed, and her home burnt down. She currently lives with her four children and husband in deplorable conditions with no access to water and little food. Nowhere is safe for them now, they have moved between several buildings to find shelter; they are still trapped in Gaza.

Kamal Albittar, his wife Nisreen, and their kids, are in Rafah at the moment, where the Israeli forces are threatening a land invasion. Kamal and his family desperately seeking to leave. Heiam, Nisreen and Kamal are in contact with me, as frequent as the internet connection makes it possible.

As they have already lost members of their family, Hayam and Kamal want to save their children from inevitable death. As many others right now, they are facing starvation, daily bombing, lack of medicine, trauma and no perspectives. Heiam and Kamal’s families now desperately want to leave this unlivable place, and they will highly appreciate any support to leave Gaza, and save their lives.

I thank everyone who already donated, and I ask you to keep them in your thoughts, keep donating, and share the story. Consider helping the families of Heiam and her brother Kamal to escape Gaza, and depart to Egypt. Your donation will cover the expenses to get out of Gaza and live in Egypt.