Hani Almadhoun braces himself whenever he hears his iPhone ping, the sound now a harbinger of bad news from his family in Gaza.
On Thanksgiving, it was a Facebook notification with a message that his 17-year old nephew had been shot in the head by a sniper.
A Telegram alert was how Almadhoun learned that his brother Mahmoud was taken by the IDF. He spotted him in a photo, blindfolded and stripped down to his underwear.
As the war continued, the bad news seemed to get closer. “At first it was the death of a good friend, someone who was in the US on a Fulbright, then it was cousins, then more cousins, then it was my sister-in-law’s entire family.”
It’s a situation that is common these days for diaspora Palestinians with family members and friends back in the Gaza Strip. Almadhoun, who hails from Gaza but has been in the US since 2000, works as the director of philanthropy for UNRWA USA, a charity that fundraises for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. The limitations of his work add another layer of helplessness.
Today nearly 1 million people in Gaza, half the territory’s population, are estimated to be sheltering in a UN facility. A single UNRWA warehouse building is now a temporary home to over 30,000 people.
UNRWA USA is among the agency’s largest non-governmental source of funding. When the war started, Almadhoun and his team raised $10m in donations in just four weeks. The funds purchased deliveries of food, water and blankets. But it did not get to the people he wished it for the most, Almadhoun said. “My family has seen none of that. They’re starved. They’re cold. They’re out of food.”
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The United Nations established UNRWA in 1949 for the purpose of providing direct relief to the 700,000 Palestinians displaced by the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.
But with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict never really ending, what was meant to be a temporary refugee designation has lasted for the last 75 years, as has UNRWA’s mandate to provide for them.
Today the agency provides schooling, healthcare, jobs and social services to these refugees and their descendants in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon – an eligible population of 5.9 million today. But in Gaza, where more than two-thirds of the population are formally registered as refugees, UNRWA maintains its largest operation and has become a fixture of life.
After Hamas took power in Gaza and Israel imposed a blockade, UNRWA became the territory’s second-largest employer after the Hamas-run government, pumping $600m annually into Gaza’s economy through salaries, vendor payments, food aid, construction and other activities, according to a 2023 International Crisis Group report.
During war the agency becomes a distributor of emergency aid and services. But in this conflict, the United Nations seal has not kept these facilities or UNRWA staff from harm. UNRWA says that over 115 of its buildings have been damaged and that over 100 UNRWA staff have been killed, the largest number of UN fatalities ever in a single conflict.
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In the US, Almadhoun is an ambassador of sorts for the agency, fostering a community of American donors and advocating for the agency before US policy makers.
Given the White House’s full-throated support for Israel’s military campaign, Almadhoun says he has had to communicate a lot of hard truths.
When the White House announced additional funding to UNRWA for its Gaza emergency response, Almadhoun said he had to balance gratitude with reality. “OK, yes you are giving a mom a can of tuna, but you also killed her son and bombed her house,” he says he told Biden administration officials.
Then there are congressional politics.
In the US, Republican lawmakers have proposed requiring UNRWA prove it has no Hamas or extremist links before receiving funding. The Republican senator Marsha Blackburn called for an investigation into reports that an Israeli hostage was held in the home of an UNRWA teacher. (UNRWA says it has received no further information or evidence to substantiate these claims after repeated requests.)
Almadhoun says that this is largely just rhetoric, pointing out that UNRWA is the only organization Israel has authorized to access and distribute fuel in Gaza.
And while his ability to fundraise for UNRWA USA is at an all-time high, UNRWA is facing the biggest challenge in its history in delivering this much-needed relief.
Rafah, in southern Gaza, is the only place that UNRWA and most organizations are able to consistently deliver aid, but it’s not nearly enough to feed the roughly 1 million Palestinians displaced there. Almadhoun’s sister who fled to the city was physically assaulted by a man over a can of corned beef. “He got a can of fava beans and he wanted the meat,” Almadhoun said.
UNRWA can’t get any aid to the north of Gaza, where the situation is increasingly dire. According to the World Food Programme, 48% of households in the north have experienced “severe levels of hunger”. In late November, the enclave’s ministry of health announced that every hospital in the north was completely out of service. Almadhoun’s cousin died after he couldn’t get basic medical care for an infected gunshot wound in his leg.
The temporary ceasefire in November should have been a respite but it didn’t come soon enough for Almadhoun’s family.
Just one hour before the ceasefire was set to start, an airstrike hit the family’s house in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, killing his brother Majed, his wife and their four children.
It could not have been a more devastating blow. The two were only a year apart, and best friends. In our conversation, he matter-of-factly rattled off the details. How the power of the blast propelled his nephew Ali’s body. How his mom guarded the rubble to keep stray dogs away. And his brother’s final resting place, the dug-up grave plot of another brother who died of Covid a few years ago.
Almadhoun’s colleagues tell me he hasn’t missed a single day of work since the war began. His brother and his family were killed on Black Friday. Almadhoun was at work that Monday, in back-to-back meetings, conference calls and media appearances.
“My wife tells me I suppress my emotions,” he sighed.
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There was one instance in which Almadhoun was able to help his family from the US, a move he believes ultimately saved their lives.
Earlier this month, Almadhoun spotted his brother, a shopkeeper, in photos showing dozens of Palestinian men bound and blindfolded by Israeli soldiers. “It was my brother Mahmoud,” Almadhoun said. “He’s always lounging in his boxers so it wasn’t hard for me to identify him. I recognized his haircut, his body.”
He then learned from his sister that his father and two young nephews were also in IDF custody.
Some Israeli media outlets were reporting that these were surrendered Hamas fighters. Almadhoun says this is not true of his brother, nor of any of his detained family members and many other men he later recognized in the photos.
Almadhoun quickly turned to social media to make the case publicly. “Many people who go on these little trips don’t ever come back,” he told me.
Almadhoun’s post went viral and he spent the next few days doing a rash of TV appearances and media interviews.
The next day all four of Almadhoun’s relatives were released unharmed.
He is convinced that these efforts made a difference. “I swear to you, if I couldn’t clearly recognize my brother, or if I didn’t go public with this, my brother would be in a ditch somewhere.”
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One reason Almadhoun says he can’t fully process Majed and his family’s death is because he doesn’t yet know all he has to grieve. “The bombs are still falling. When it’s done we will catch our breath and look to see what we lost.” Almadhoun said.
Almadhoun cycles through photos from the last time he visited Gaza with his wife and two young daughters this summer. He looks at the business profile he created of Majed’s kitchenware shop. Almadhoun knew it had absolutely no practical purpose – all the shop’s customers lived in the neighborhood and didn’t need help finding it – but he did it anyway, knowing it made Majed happy to see his digital mark on a world beyond Gaza.
Last he heard from his brother Mahmoud over the weekend, he had been stripped and detained again, this time in a hospital courtyard where he was sheltering. He was ultimately released.
But it’s getting harder and harder for Almadhoun’s family to communicate with him. All he can do is wait for his phone to ping.
