Discover and support Gaza fundraisers

My name is Suleiman. I am a law graduate from Gaza. I was on the verge of completing my bachelor's degree with one subject left, when, on Sunday 7th October, everything ended as the war on Gaza began.

I was preparing to start my professional career, gain practical legal experience, and build an independent life. My family had a small apartment ready for me, and I had begun working in a legal office so I could practice the profession of law in Gaza and contribute to my community. That apartment, along with my family home, is now gone. The genocide has obliterated my dreams and ambitions.

Over the years my family home has been struck multiple times. We have rebuilt it before, brick by brick, refusing to be erased. Now, it has been hit again and again until nothing remains. Even the rubble has been picked through, nothing is left.

From the first day of the week of the war, we have been displaced more than eleven times. From the north of Gaza to the south. I lived in car parks, hospitals, and operating rooms. I lived in tents. I slept in the street. In the first month alone, we were uprooted 3 times. After that, I walked more than 20 kilometres on foot to reach the south, staying in the European Hospital, then displaced to Al-Mawasi. I returned from the south to the north many times - each time supporting and caring for my younger siblings, the youngest of who was 6 years old when the war began. How I have tasted the horrors of displacement.

And here I am today, never letting go of hope, and never letting go of the certainty that one day I will return and rebuild again. We are a people who return. Right now, I need to survive.

In those first days, my aunt and cousins were murdered by the bombings. I buried my family members with my own hands. I dug their graves myself. I do not know if their remains are still there. The Israeli occupation forces have dug up mass graves, moved bodies, and destroyed evidence to cover their crimes. Even the dead are not safe. Even the graves are not sacred. I have lost hundreds of family members and friends. Their names are etched into me. I live with the weight of burying them and the fear that their remains have been desecrated, their graves erased.

For nearly a year, my family of nine lived inside a hospital. It was not a choice. It was our only option. Every other door had closed. Some nights, I could not find a space to sleep inside. I slept outside on the ground. I was inside that hospital when it was attacked. The explosions tore through the walls. The dust swallowed the hallways. My family huddled together waiting for the next blast. That moment will never leave me.

We were displaced again to Al-Mawasi, where we lived in a tent. The tents were infested with bugs and rats. Disease and infections spread through the camp. Medicine, clean water, and sanitation were deliberately restricted by the occupation. Wounds that should have healed became life-threatening. We endured sandstorms, rain, and flooding. Then a fire took what little we had managed to salvage. What cannot be replaced is a life, and my life is under hourly threat. I need to get out.

The occupation starved us. In the hospital, we survived on packet noodles, and only if we could find them. In Al-Mawasi, we went to sleep hungry and woke up the same way. Water is a constant nightmare. When it is accessible, it is not clean or safe. I watched countries drop aid from the sky. They called it aid. It killed my neighbours and friends, many of them children. I never let my family go to the distribution sites. Everyone I knew who went came back wounded or did not come back at all. This is the choice we have been left: starve slowly, or risk death for a bag of food.

The bombing and shooting continue without pause. Unnoticed. Unacknowledged. The world abandons my family, even though everyone can see what is happening. Everyone has access to watch us. And still, the silence holds. This is a crime against humanity broadcast in real time. That abandonment sits in my chest alongside the grief.

Wherever we have been forced to go, my family and I have always supported our community. Even when we had so little, we shared what we had. We provided meals, clothing, water trucks, and other aid to families who had even less. In the hospital, in the tent, in every place of displacement, we looked around and saw others suffering, and we gave. This is who we are. This is who I am. Because this is how I was raised.

I am a law graduate who cannot practice law. The institutions have been bombed, the economy strangled. I risk my life for a bag of flour instead of practicing the law I studied. While searching for food, I've watched friends and family killed and shot. So many families left without a father. I have been shelled standing in a queue for bread. But I am not broken. I have worked too hard and come too far to let this genocide be the end of my story. I deserve a chance to live, to build, to become the professional I worked to be.

While the world abandoned Gaza, someone from far away saw me. She was fundraising, trying to help. She saw my suffering and refused to look away. We fell in love, and we became engaged. She is in Australia, safe. She is the one helping me. Our engagement is proof that even in the darkest times, human connection can cross any border.

I cannot leave Gaza by any normal means. The borders are sealed. The occupation controls every exit. Evacuation is the only way out, and it comes at a cost most Palestinians cannot afford. This fundraiser is my lifeline. The funds raised will go directly towards securing safe passage out of Gaza so I can reach a place of safety, continue my education, develop my legal expertise, and live the life I have worked so hard to build. This is not an abandonment of Gaza. It is a retreat to survive, to gain the stability and resources I need to support my family and, one day, return to rebuild. When the day comes, I will return to Gaza, stand on the ruins of my home, and rebuild. But for now, I deserve what every human being deserves: a safe and peaceful life.

Please, help me open that door. Donate and share. Every contribution, no matter how small, brings me one step closer to safety, to a future, to life. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for seeing me when the world has looked away.