International mobilisation to help the wretched people of Gaza can take many forms, from high-level diplomacy to aid from NGOs. However, for grassroots organisations that were so effective in the Ukraine conflict (think of those white vans travelling east from Western Europe) it has been much harder to bring direct relief to Gazans.
I interviewed two French people, ‘Ahmed’ and ‘Meryam’, about their recent trip to Cairo to attempt to bring direct aid to the people of Gaza and to displaced Palestinian families. We have changed their names to protect them because supporting the Palestinian cause, including refugees, is viewed with suspicion by both the Egyptian and the French authorities, even if President Macron has now recognised the State of Palestine.
Ordinary people, extraordinary determination
Both Ahmed and Meryam live in the South of France. Meryam worked as a PA in a large corporation until her retirement earlier in 2025. Ahmed has spent his professional life as a community and youth worker supporting vulnerable people, from young children to the elderly. Both were already active with local organisations defending the Palestinian cause. Meryam explains that fellow campaigners in the city where they live come from all walks of life and have been active for many years, long before the Hamas attack in October 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza. She refers to them as “just people with a heart,”.
In April this year, they signed up to the ‘Global March to Gaza’, an international grassroots initiative to demonstrate peacefully and to deliver aid via the Rafah crossing. “Getting involved in Palestine, that was an obvious choice for me,” says Meryam. “It was obvious because of the children. When aid workers or children start being killed, there’s no humanity left.” The same applies to Ahmed: “I had been active, on and off, for several years, but it took me only three days to decide to travel to Cairo. I felt it was time to take concrete action.”
The march is blocked
So in June, about 5000 activists from 80 countries converged on Cairo, either by land across North Africa, or by direct flights. Ahmed and Meryam were among those who flew in on 12 June, but they quickly realised that the Egyptian authorities, who had neither approved nor banned the event up to that point, were not going to let it happen. They saw fellow-marchers being put on flights back, having their bags seized, being interrogated and even hit by the police.
Others who made it to their hotels were met by the police and were taken back to the airport. Meryam, Ahmed and others escaped arrest by switching from the hotel they had booked to a more discreet Airbnb. Unsurprisingly, none of them made it to Rafah. The buses they had hired to get there were stopped by police at several checkpoints, with passengers left to wait in blistering heat, roughed up by government-sponsored militias, and eventually turned away.
“It was clear the Egyptian authorities were under pressure from Israel not to let us reach the Sinai Desert [the way to Rafah]”, explains Meryam. “However, we had a Plan B. The police might have seized bags at the airport, but we were able to keep the cash we raised before we left and had brought with us. So we decided to distribute it to Palestinian families who had fled to Cairo.”
Stateless and stranded
Since October 2023, more than 100,000 Gazans, possibly as many as 150,000, have fled to Egypt and Cairo. Their situation is precarious, to say the least. The cost of entering Egypt has shot up from a few hundred US dollars before the war to US$5000 per adult and US$2500 per child. Whether these sums go to the Egyptian authorities or to unofficial smugglers is unclear. In any case, the refugees only have 45 days to apply for asylum. After that, they might lose their right to work, to open a bank account, or even to send their children to school. They have no recourse to public funds.
These are the people Ahmed, Meryam and their friends set out to find and help. Meryam recounts their first contact: “One of the marchers who was turned back at the airport knew a family and gave me their address. It took us an hour to get there. The area was unspeakably dirty; worse than a slum. We were not sure it was safe to get out of the minibus. When we eventually went in, the family welcomed us like royalty. All the food they had they put on the table to share with us – one of the most moving moments of the week.”
Cairo’s ‘Mother Teresa’
On that occasion, they met a woman who, again, they do not want to name for safety reasons, but who they describe as ‘Mother Teresa’. She has made it her mission to collect and bring aid to as many refugees in Cairo as she can. This includes orphanages and hospitals, where refugees might be admitted but could find themselves having to sleep on the floor. It was she who put Ahmed and Meryam in touch with about 20 other families in need.
“Most of those families have no way of accessing medical care or buying medicines”, says Ahmed. “We didn’t have much time, so we divided the cash we had brought, about 5000 euros, between envelopes, and we took taxis to visit as many families as we could and leave them some money. We’d share a drink with them, chat for 10 minutes, then move on to the next one. In one case, we went straight to a pharmacy to buy medication that was needed urgently.”
Meryam starts talking about another family that made a deep impression on her, but she is choked with emotion and Ahmed has to take over: “We visited a young woman called Maïssa, 37. She’d lost her husband, her brother and her sister-in-law. She lives with her mum and her five children, and she has also taken in eight orphans, aged between four and nine, so 15 children in all. She lifted the eldest boy’s T-shirt to show us the scars from shrapnel wounds on his back.”
Lawlessness and resilience
What seems clear is that Palestinian refugees in Cairo receive little state support or legal protection, which opens the door to unscrupulous behaviour all the way down the chain.
A number of Palestinians, for example, are also held in refugee camps where all they get is food handouts from the government. Young French activists in Meryam and Ahmed’s group had collected money from their contacts in France intending to travel to these camps to distribute it. However, they heard that racketeering was rife, with families who had been observed receiving cash, being forced to hand it over to militiamen. The French activists changed tack and invited the refugees from the camps to meet them in their Airbnb, but were denounced and threatened with expulsion by their landlord and the police.
What struck Ahmed and Meryam, though, is that they saw no bitterness among the refugees they met. They were smiling, welcoming people, and there was no talk of anger or revenge. Even among the amputees, including the children, the will to survive seemed to trump it all. They witnessed youngsters, some with missing legs, others with missing arms, manage to play a game of football, then help each other with food.
Now back in France, Ahmed and Meryam are thinking about what they can do next to help the Palestinian cause. One priority, of course, is to raise more funds. Meryam, for example, has bought collecting tins, which she places in shops and cafés in her town. She will channel the money to those in Cairo who are coordinating the relief efforts for refugees. She even hopes to get funds directly into Gaza via the French Jewish Union for Peace, which campaigns for a just peace in the Middle East and is particularly active in helping the people of Gaza. Ahmed and Meryam both work with Jewish activists committed to the Palestine cause and make efforts to distinguish clearly between Jewish identity and political Zionism.
Ahmed is also focused on the campaign to boycott those large companies in France and beyond, many of them household names, which support the Israeli economy either through trade links or by opening stores, including stores in illegal Jewish settlements.
Meryam and Ahmed, like so many, are appalled by the violence meted out to Palestinians and particularly to Gazans, but the trip to Cairo has strengthened their resolve to bring help and hope to the most destitute.
Note from the editor: Several reputable charities are doing significant work to support Palestinians, for instance Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), Islamic Relief UK and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF).
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