A good 100,000 Palestinians came to Egypt during the Gaza war. They are traumatized, their bodies scarred. Even after their escape, they are mainly dependent on themselves.
There are only a few days left until the due date. But Riham does not know who will pay for her delivery. Since fleeing Gaza – at the time she was six months pregnant – she has asked the Palestinian embassy in Egypt for help, but to no avail. “I have only been promised that everything will be fine,” says the 28-year-old, whose real name is different. “Now I am supposed to give birth in a week – and nothing has happened.”
Since the war began, more than 100,000 Palestinians have fled to neighboring Egypt, mostly through controversial travel companies – and ended up stranded, most of them in Cairo. They cannot return to Gaza. Often, they cannot move forward to a new life either. Very few have the necessary papers or the money to rent an apartment, open a bank account, pay medical expenses, or send their children to school.
“No money, no work”
“I have no money, no job, I won’t be able to live,” says Riham. Like all Palestinians in this text, she doesn’t want to read her real name in the news. Riham came to Cairo with her three-year-old son and her mother-in-law, who is suffering from breast cancer. She didn’t have the money to pay for her husband’s departure, which would currently cost 5,000 US dollars through controversial Egyptian travel agencies. At least the Palestinian embassy is paying for an apartment for the three of them. For now.
Because the Palestinian relief agency UNRWA has no mandate to provide refugee aid in Egypt, those affected are not registered as refugees. Due to their lack of residency status, they are operating in a legal grey area – tolerated, often invisible in the sea of buildings in Cairo with its 23 million inhabitants, mostly dependent on themselves or the help of other Palestinians and volunteers. The question of their residency status is “the mother of all problems,” says the Palestinian ambassador to Egypt, Diab al-Louh, to the dpa.
“Alone and on the street most of the time”
“I arrived two weeks ago,” says 19-year-old Khalid, who ran a small supermarket in Gaza. “I’m alone and spend most of my time on the streets.” After a bomb attack, he lay under rubble in Gaza for three days, sustained serious injuries to his arm and shoulder, and lost his right eye. “I have no money. I don’t know where to go.” He has a video on his cell phone of the moment when helpers pulled him out of the rubble; his face is barely recognizable under the blood and dust.
There are cancer patients, traumatized children and young people, people with amputated legs and arms, people with burns. Salma, who suffered severe bruises under the rubble, says Egyptian doctors passed her around “like a ball.” The state hospitals are poorly equipped anyway, and employees are underpaid. They can hardly provide good care either.
A few hours’ drive away, war is raging. It was triggered by the Hamas terror attack on Israel on October 7, which has now left – according to Palestinian figures – 37,372 Palestinians dead and 85,452 injured. The war could, according to Israel’s National Security Advisor, last another six months. Or longer.
Humanitarian supply gap
A network of volunteers is now trying to fill the humanitarian gap a little. Among them is a mother of two with a full-time job who is looking for storage space for donated aid supplies. Doctors who ask colleagues for discounted treatment via WhatsApp groups. An entrepreneur who is renting empty apartments in a Cairo suburb and making them habitable.
One of the first was John Flynn, known as Quinn, who traveled from the USA to Egypt at short notice after October 7. He says that a number of users responded to his Tiktok videos about the trip, offering him a bed and wanting to pay for his plane ticket. He has now become a kind of grassroots ambassador who connects everyone.
Medicine, money for rent, clothing, diapers
A similar story is told by a 28-year-old who booked a plane ticket from Canada in November. She thought she would stay for a month. Today she is still in Cairo and helps to provide families with the bare necessities on a daily basis. There are now an estimated 1,600 volunteers, including people in Ireland, Malaysia and South Africa, who are helping virtually, for example by answering legal questions or maintaining databases.
Where the money comes from is not always clear. A Pakistani says that the 600,000 euros for 29 ambulances that he brought from Germany to Gaza were mostly financed by “individuals”, but also partly by aid organizations. The money often comes from aid organizations abroad, partly from online donation campaigns. “I have a problem with holding money in my hand whose origin I do not know,” says a volunteer.
Resources “completely exhausted”
Flynn has already moved on to London, where he hopes to raise $300,000 from donors, including to build a community center in Cairo as a first point of contact for refugees from Gaza. The funds are “completely exhausted,” he says.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), which has limited power in the West Bank, has no money because of “Israel’s occupation,” says Ambassador Al-Louh. “We are 100 percent dependent on non-profit organizations and associations.” He is currently trying to get the Egyptian government to grant Palestinians a temporary residency permit so that they can work legally and send their children to school, at least for the duration of the war.
One month waiting time for free milk powder
In east Cairo, volunteers have turned a few empty apartments into a clothing store. They are pulling jeans out of boxes, sorting children’s sneakers and hanging blouses on clothes racks. “Welcome to the Pali Boutique,” reads a printed note on the wall, with the flags of Egypt and Palestine below.
“We are simply completely overwhelmed by the number of people,” says volunteer Jennifer Mina. To get clothes or powdered milk here, you have to put your name on a list, and the waiting time is currently several months. 90 percent of the volunteers are Palestinians, says Mina, who comes from the USA and has lived in Egypt for a long time. “Most of the work,” she says of the Palestinians, “they do themselves.”