Keeping Friends Alive in Gaza

We are Jan and Iain Chalmers from Oxford. We are raising funds for Dr Khamis Elessi living in Gaza to help him and his family rebuild their lives. Soon after the deadly Israeli assaults on Gaza at the beginning of October last year, our close friend, Dr Khamis Elessi, was urged by well-meaning friends to leave the Strip for sanctuary elsewhere. Khamis declined these offers because he was unwilling to abandon Gaza, his large family and patients to the ethnic cleansing being used to deliberately to destroy the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip. He remains in Gaza where the situation is desperate. Little food is available, and what food there is, is wildly expensive. Despite the dire situation, Khamis raises a joke and a smile each time we speak. His tenacity and spirit is extraordinary, but mostly his devotion to his family, and his patients who are surviving with him is outstanding. He has lost more than 12Kg in weight, and searches the markets, often in the dead of night, for food that he can afford to buy or have and pay later. He is a dignified, proud and honourable, son, husband, father and a medical pain control consultant who has been, terrified and worn out by the months of running from place to place to try and keep himself, his family and the people around him safe. Money that you donate will be used to feed and sustain the many that Khamis is trying to protect. If, however, it proves impossible to get donations to him it will be returned to you in due course.