Sharing peace with neighbors in Gaza amid devastation

Rifqa Al-Hamalawi was coming home from her work in Gaza one day when she noticed a family, lying in the sand, covered only with a blanket. She was used to seeing people living in tents and makeshift dwellings since the Israeli military’s invasion of Gaza in 2023, but this family seemed especially vulnerable.

When she stopped to speak with them, she learned that months before, the mother, father and their two children were riding in a donkey cart when it was struck by a missile. 

The father’s* legs both had to be amputated. Although their daughter survived, the mother was severely traumatized because the missile attack caused her infant son to fall from her arms and die on the spot; in the mayhem she wasn’t able to retrieve her son’s body and bury him. 

Al-Hamalawi, director and founder of Al-Najd Developmental Forum, a humanitarian organization and an MCC partner, gave them some money that day and promised to return. The next day, she and her staff brought mattresses, blankets and food, and they set up a tent for the family. Al-Najd continues to support the family with supplies as they are available, but especially with emotional support for the mother.

“We talk with her, try to comfort her, ask about her, and see how we can help. If she needs anything, we are here to listen,” Al-Hamalawi says. “We also give her emotional support, reminding her that God has better things in store for her, and that she still has a beautiful daughter by her side.”

To Al-Hamalawi, this is what being a peacemaker looks like in Gaza during relentless bombardment and blockades of urgently needed food and supplies by Israel. Despite living through the war herself, she persists in doing all she can to relieve the suffering among the people around her. 

*Except for Al-Hamalawi, no names of people photographed in Gaza are being used in this article.

To honor her work, MCC has awarded Al-Hamalawi the 2025 Michael J. Sharp Global Peacemaker Award. The award is given annually to a person or organization who exemplifies MCC’s commitment to peace and justice across the world. Sharp was a former MCC staff person, who devoted his life to peacebuilding in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

“The most basic human instinct in times of horror is self-preservation, using whatever means available to protect oneself,” says Seth Malone, who with his wife, Sarah Funkhouser, serve as MCC representatives for Jordan, Palestine and Israel. 

“But Rifqa, she elevated herself from fear and selfishness, turning to serve her neighbors suffering from immense violence. Her resilience and strength despite the danger to herself is truly inspiring.”

The danger that Al-Hamalawi and her staff deal with was evident during a Sept. 2 video interview with MCC from Gaza City. Al-Hamalawi was talking about peacebuilding and her work, when she suddenly cringed and brought her hand to her right ear.

A missile landed nearby, she said and paused to listen before continuing the conversation. 

“I don’t fear for myself,” says Al-Hamalawi. “I think about the victims of the missiles and bombing. Will they die? Will they be injured or amputated? Who died? A whole family? Specific people? Children? I hope it was a strike with no casualties, but there are never strikes without casualties.”

She heard the sound of ambulances outside her door, a sign to her that people had been injured or killed.

As Israel prepared to seize the city, this was just one of many attacks. “Not just day after day, hour after hour — every 10 minutes,” she says. “It’s 24/7. What can we do?”

Carry on. That’s what she and the Al-Najd staff do.

Since the invasion began in October 2023, she and her team have distributed some form of humanitarian assistance — food baskets, bedding, shelter material, clothing and cooking gas cylinders — to more than 73,000 people. 

Al-Hamalawi and her team have persisted despite deaths among their own families, injuries to themselves and being displaced multiple times. Each time violence forces them to move, they regroup and visit the people around them to find those with the greatest needs.

Just days after the invasion began, Funkhouser remembers, MCC’s team in Palestine and Israel reached out to partners in Gaza. The first thing Al-Hamalawi said to them was, “Can you help us help?” Funkhouser says she couldn’t believe that despite all that was happening around them, Al-Najd staff were already focusing on how they could best aid their neighbors. 

MCC promised the funding, Al-Hamalawi purchased bedding and emergency food, and her staff distributed it to people nearby who were displaced or lost their homes. 

Throughout the past two years, Israel severely restricted the flow of food and supplies that humanitarian groups could get into Gaza. As local supplies became more scarce and more expensive, she has persisted in searching out items that families need. Just this year, she has been able to find and purchase gas cooking stoves, children’s clothes and shoes and fresh vegetables for distribution. 

“I go from merchant to merchant to find the best goods and negotiate prices,” she says. “I prefer to do it personally, so I don’t put my team at risk. So I go out with a driver and make the rounds. I also analyze the situation in the country, what supplies are available, and based on that, I decide when and what to buy.”

Al-Hamalawi was born and raised in Gaza. Her compassion and outreach to others, especially women, grew out of her experience of getting divorced as a young woman. Although cultural stigma called for her to stay at home in shame, Al-Hamalawi's father encouraged her to find work. Using her diploma in business administration, Al-Hamalawi worked throughout the 1990s and into the next decade for organizations that focused on empowering women. 

In 2007, she started Al-Najd Developmental Forum, an organization providing job opportunities and income generation projects for women, including making pastries and sewing. With MCC’s support, Al-Najd provided rabbits and information on rabbit-rearing so women could raise and sell them for profit.

As a result of the training and projects, she says, women become more independent, which helped them to feel better mentally and to become more active, go out in public more and support their families. 

After previous Israeli military strikes in Gaza, including in 2021 and 2014, Al-Najd also partnered with MCC to distribute food relief and repair houses. And, since 2023, providing emergency assistance whenever possible has been a constant aim for Al-Hamalawi and her team.

“Our lifelong mission has been to help people: delivering aid, whether relief assistance, development projects, medical support or psychosocial support,” she says. “This is the mission of Al-Najd, and we do not back down, especially now that people are in the greatest need of us.”

Al-Hamalawi acknowledges that her work is exhausting. “I get tired of this situation, and it can be devastating,” she says. During the week after her early September interview with MCC, her house in Gaza City was bombed, forcing her to relocate. It wasn’t the first time she’d been displaced. 

Earlier in the war, her house and those of her six brothers were destroyed. Her sister, sister-in-law and nephew, as well as 25-30 relatives in her extended family, have been killed. 

“Even when the reality is very hard, I push through my own pain to give people a spark of hope through emotional support,” she says. “Of course, there are moments of weakness, but I have to stay strong for my people, because they look to me for hope and positivity. But honestly, sometimes I too need someone to give me that hope and strength.”  

She says she finds that strength through her dependence on God and faith that one day the suffering will end. She is happiest and most at peace, she says, when she accompanies her staff to give out supplies, like a recent distribution of children’s clothing and shoes.

“Of course, I feel inner peace because I see the happiness on children’s faces,” Al-Hamalawi says. “I was happy because they were happy. I felt extremely content seeing them running around, wearing new clothes and enjoying them. That filled me with so much joy.”

She is encouraged, too, by the peacebuilding award.

“This means a lot to me,” Al-Hamalawi says. “It showed that my efforts were recognized and led to something meaningful, that my work truly mattered. In the end, I gained something that brought me deep happiness, gave me strength and lifted my spirit to keep doing the work I do.”
 

Caption for top photo:  Rifqa Al-Hamalawi, director and founder of Al-Najd Developmental Forum, listens carefully to a woman she visited near Gaza City in early September. Al-Najd/Mahmoud Miqdad