As Israel escalates its attacks on Gaza City, we wanted to share with you a message from our colleague Wafaa El-Derawi who is leading MECA’s emergency response in Gaza.

As Wafaa notes, MECA is still standing and doing everything we can with very limited supplies. We have even opened a new community kitchen to serve displaced families in Gaza City. But it’s not enough. In a new joint statement with over 50 organizations, we explain this latest campaign is a death sentence:

“Intensified Israeli military attacks on Gaza City and forced displacement orders for the entire city are leaving families with an impossible dilemma: flee and risk death on the road and in overcrowded displacement areas, or stay and face relentless bombardment in their shelters. Starvation and siege await them regardless.”

Please continue taking action to stop the genocide.

I’m writing to you from Gaza as I do my very best to stay strong, to hold myself together, and to keep going with our work on the ground. Even as my heart trembles with fear, fear of losing a colleague, or a friend, especially those still in Gaza City.

Every single minute, things grow worse.
And right now, as I write these words, over 100 residential apartments and 3 schools sheltering thousands of displaced people in Al-Shati Camp have just been bombed.
Thousands of people are walking aimlessly through the rubble having lost everything; their homes, their children, their savings, and even their dignity.

MECA’s new community kitchen in Gaza City cooks 4,000 hot meals each day

Here at MECA, we are still standing. We are still present in the streets, among the tents, beside our people, doing everything we can to stay and support them until the very last breath.
Our team and volunteers in Gaza are risking their lives daily, moving wherever people are gathered; bringing them clean water, warm meals, and the dignity of cleanliness.

Every single day we distribute 600,000 liters of clean drinking water just in Gaza City. We operate hundreds of water wells so families can wash, cook, and survive.

Today, we opened a new community kitchen to serve nearly 4,000 hot meals a day in Gaza City, and tomorrow, we’ll open another.

Just yesterday, we completed the distribution of 1575 fresh produce parcels and this week we’re preparing 1,500 more.
Thirty-two sanitation workers are now in the streets of western Gaza City, collecting and removing tons of garbage and waste from areas where life continues to cling to the dust.

Yes, we’re afraid. We’d be lying if we said otherwise.

We barely sleep. We dread the next loss. But we have not given up.

This is the hardest moment of our lives, the greatest test of our strength, our humanity, and our ability to keep showing up for those who have no one else left.

As the world turns away, we are trying to be the last light that stays on.

Please, stay with us.
Support us, now more than ever, so we can continue.

Because every moment we hold on gives someone else the strength to hold on too.