Samaher and I meet in person for the first time at City Stars Mall in Cairo in September 2024. It’s early and already the temperature exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and is only getting hotter. The doors to the mall aren’t open yet, so we find a patch of shaded grass under a small tree. She’s brought two of her children: her 13-year-old daughter, Samar, and her youngest son, 8-year-old Mohammed. Her eldest son, 15-year-old Odae, is back at the apartment, sleeping.
“He loves to sleep and to eat,” she tells me. We agree this is the case with most teenage boys.
Samaher has been in Egypt with her three children since their displacement from Gaza in early March 2024. The journey cost the family their entire savings of $8,000, enough to secure Samaher and the children a one-time 40-day temporary visa, but not enough for the children’s father to join them.
Samaher found the cheapest apartment she could in northern Cairo, but with no option to renew the visa, she could not work, acquire a bank account, gain health insurance, or enroll her children in school.
Now, with the first stage of the ceasefire underway, she faces an even more precarious dilemma: stow away enough money to eventually evacuate her husband to Egypt, where they will both be left undocumented or attempt to return her family to northern Gaza, where their home is reduced to rubble and Israel has already violated the ceasefire over 350 times.
“We speak with him as often as we can,” she says, recounting the moments she is able to reach her husband. “The situation is very difficult.”
Samaher and her family are far from the only Palestinians struggling to survive in Egypt. The Palestinian ambassador in Cairo, Diab al-Louh, estimates there could be up to 100,000 Palestinians from Gaza left languishing in Egypt. Many, like Samaher, were forced from Gaza without proper documentation.
Palestinians pushed into Egypt also do not qualify for refugee status. The primary agency responsible for helping Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, was established in 1949 to assist over 700,000 Palestinians displaced in the 1948 Nakba. Its mandate is limited to Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria — it does not include Palestinian refugees in Egypt. In 1951, the UNHCR was established to address the needs of European refugees after WWII. Over time, UNHCR has expanded its mandate to assist refugees in other areas, but Palestinians have remained solely under the care of UNRWA.
Even if UNRWA were able to expand its mandate to cover Palestinians in Egypt, the organization is still reeling from severe funding cuts after Israel, without evidence, accused a number of UNRWA members of coordinating with Hamas, leading several countries to suspend their funding to UNRWA. On Jan. 24, 2025, Israel ordered UNRWA to vacate and cease all operations in its east Jerusalem premises by Jan. 30, 2025, a decision the United Nations Palestinian Rights Committee stated is “as unlawful as the Israeli occupation itself.”
To cover her family’s expenses in Egypt, Samaher has had to get creative.
With the help of her mother, who is in Belgium, she started a GoFundMe account to raise funds for her family. She can’t, however, directly access the funds. Not only because she is unable to get a bank account, but also because Egypt is not on the list of supported countries by GoFundMe. (Samaher applied for a visa for her and her children to join her mother in Belgium, but has yet to hear back about the status of that application).
Receiving the funds from the account is a complicated process: her mother must first pay a fee to withdraw the GoFundMe money, then pay another fee to wire the money to Samaher’s Vodafone cash wallet.
The Vodafone wallet is attached to Samaher’s TikTok account, where Samaher goes live every night, for hours at a time, asking viewers to donate TikTok “gifts” in amounts ranging from a rose, worth one TikTok coin ($0.01), to a disco ball, worth 1,000 coins ($13.30). The coins are then converted into actual currency, where only after reaching $100, Samaher can transfer the funds into her Vodafone wallet, minus an overall 50% commission taken by TikTok.
That is, of course, if her account isn’t suspended, and her account is often suspended.
Marwan is also from Gaza but has Egyptian residency. As a student of veterinary practice at Zagazig University, Marwan has been using money that would usually be paid as tuition to his school and instead sending it to his family to help them buy blankets, food, and medicine. 2024 should have been his last year of school, but now he is a full year behind in classes and owes $3,000 in tuition fees. Until he pays the balance, he cannot reenroll.
His brother Ahmed, who fled Gaza in the spring of 2024, has a master’s degree in communications engineering. However, like Samaher, without residency, he is unable to find work either locally or abroad and is now living with Marwan in Zagazig.
Both Marwan and Ahmed spoke of their young niece, four-year-old Judy, whose parents were killed.
“I want to hear her voice again without fear,” says Marwan. “I tell her to stay strong and I am trying with all my might to get them money for food and water. I am waiting for the day I can hug all of my family again.”
Like Samaher, Marwan does not have direct access to his GoFundMe funds. His fundraiser is hosted by a friend in Britain, who withdraws the money for a fee, then wires it to Marwan, again for a fee. Marwan then wires it to the Bank of Palestine in Gaza, for a fee of sometimes up to 30%. By the time the money reaches his family, more than half is already gone.
“It can trigger a variety of emotions, from frustration and anger to disappointment and anxiety,” says Marwan. “If you and your family rely on donations or financial support, and then discover so much of the money is not reaching them because of commission deductions, it feels like your family is not being supported as they should. They are so [much] more deserving of this money [than] whoever is charging the fee. The price of food is very high. $100 does not buy anything.”
Still, he stays up late, messaging influencers on Instagram and TikTok, hoping they will promote the fundraiser. Sometimes people write back; sometimes they share the fundraiser, but most of the time they don’t. He had better luck months ago.
“They have all but completely stopped,” he says. “I try to reach more people, but to no avail.”
His brother Ahmed does the same. “This is all we can do to help them.”
Salam is in a similar situation. A fellow student in Zagazig, he was also in Egypt attending school before Oct. 7, 2023. His family’s home was destroyed on Oct. 10, 2023, in an Israeli strike that killed his brother, Mohammed, his brother’s wife Salam, and their two children Hadi and Sham. His other brother Jihad was injured in the blast, resulting in platinum plates implanted in his leg and hand. Jihad can hardly move and requires additional medical treatment.
Salam hopes Jihad would be one of the first to evacuate when the Rafah border reopens. “He’s seriously injured. He needs treatment outside the strip, everything there is destroyed.”
As of Dec. 31, 2024, the UN estimates approximately 14,000 people in Gaza require medical evacuation. But since Israel seized the Rafah crossing on May 7, 2024, until the ceasefire on Jan. 19, 2025, only 450 patients have been allowed to evacuate.
So Jihad waits, under the care of his mother and father, while Salam spends his time the same as other Palestinians forced to Egypt, sharing the family’s GoFundMe on social media. But early this year, GoFundMe began refunding donations issued to his account. The platform claimed that banking information was not entered correctly into the account, which was started by Salam’s brother in Germany, Ahmed. While they were able to get the issue fixed, most donations had already been returned.
Salam says it was unfortunate but is grateful for those who have donated again, “It means so much for people to donate to us, even if only a little bit. Their support is everything.”
Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi announced in January 2025 that Palestinians would be allowed to evacuate through the Rafah crossing starting in early February, but those evacuations would be limited to Palestinians seeking critical medical treatment, and no Palestinians in Egypt would be permitted to return to Gaza. Both Salam and Marwan’s families are unsure what options will be available to them. The uncertainty has only been exacerbated by Israel’s ceasefire violations as its bombing campaign in Gaza began again on March 18, 2024.
Marwan and Ahmed wish to go home. Salam waits for his brother to evacuate for treatment. Samaher is uncertain of what she will do.
“What are we to do?” She asks. “Where will we go? Our house was so beautiful and full of love and overlooked the sea. Now it is gone, and it is unreasonably cold. There are no good options for us.”
In the meantime, Samaher has finally been able to enroll her children in online classes in Ramallah. It isn’t easy though as the internet is unreliable, and their school books are expensive. Above all, her children are homesick.
“They miss their father and their home,” says Samaher.
“And my friends,” says her daughter Samar. “I miss my friends a lot. I just hope they are okay.”
