The HUPcast 20: Hands Up from Gaza Layla's Moon

In tonight’s podcast, meet 19-year-old Leyla whose message resonates with the resolve she showed when she first met Nick as a 13-year-old in Gaza.

I’m Layla El Hej Abed , a 19-year-old Palestinian girl living in Gaza.

I’m a medical science student at the Islamic University of Gaza which has been destroyed and this year was supposed to be my second year but everything stopped during this war on Gaza. 

All of you have seen the situation here.  I have lost many friends and  colleagues, teachers and relatives. We have lived horrible days till now.  We evacuated many times, from my house to other houses from schools to institutions/situations to streets and hospitals and it ended up here, here in Rafah city which is a city in the south of the Gaza Strip. We left a lot of things at home, we only took our documents and important papers like ID cards and we took some money. 

We here suffer from water shortage, medicine lack, food lack, bread, no gas, no electricity, the only source of energy is the solar panels, and it’s not provided for all of us in Gaza. 

We are not feeling comfortable at all.  Days and nights are the same, scary and horrible and dark.  We used to see the sky of Gaza blue but now everything is black and white.  Most of my family’s houses are destroyed. People are living in schools and in streets, hospitals but nowhere is safe.  We see marches everywhere in the world and that’s what is keeping us stronger during these massacres  here in Gaza but we still believe that we will be back home and all of this will end. We will be back to our lives as they were and everything will end. We are just sure that everything will end.  And thanks for everyone that is supporting Palestine out there.