“Gaza is currently unliveable. We need to rebuild a life there, but we don’t know what the next stage will be. We are afraid of what will come next. All the people of Gaza feel this way,” 12-year-old Mohammed told me.

He is one of only 276 children (latest data from OCHA, the UN’s humanitarian affairs office) who were able to leave Gaza due to medical reasons – Mohammad has cancer, and his treatment was interrupted by the war, which started after the October 7 attacks on Israel, when Hamas killed about 1,200 people and abducted 251 more.

According to the Hamas-run health ministry, more than 47,000 people have been killed over the 15-month ground and air offensive by Israel. The number of dead, however, only indicates the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe faced by the 2.1 million inhabitants of Gaza, almost all of whom were displaced during the war. OCHA says that 92% of Gaza’s housing has been destroyed or damaged, and nearly 1.9 million people require emergency shelter. 

The war has also limited the ability to support those in Gaza from outside. According to the UN, before the war about 500 trucks entered Gaza every day, mainly carrying commercial goods. For the last 15 months, supplies – provided mostly by charities – have fallen by about 80%. 

Reporting on those numbers, the BBC added: “Even when aid enters Gaza, it does not always get to its intended destination. Aid workers have warned about criminal gangs intercepting aid deliveries and looting supplies, as law and order broke down.” 

The crisis has resulted in skyrocketing inflation: “The black market price of cooking gas increased by 2,612%, diesel by 1,315%, wood by 250%, and diapers by 620%,” the IPC reported.

Jordan is at the forefront of support for Gaza. Jordanian society feels closeness to Palestinians, and the country has a significant number of citizens with roots in Palestine as well as Palestinian refugees.

Fighting with the King Hussein Cancer Center

The most emotional experience for me was talking to kids from Gaza, who were diagnosed with cancer and whose treatment was arrested by the war. 

Access to medical help in Gaza is extremely limited. The Gaza’s health ministry claims that more than 110,200 people have been injured in the war. Thousands are also ill as a result of water and food shortages, and poor sanitation. Simultaneously, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), only 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially working, and these are severely understaffed (30% of needed staff) and undersupplied. Even those partially active hospitals are unevenly distributed – there is only one on northern Gaza.

Israel rejects accusations of targeting medical infrastructure and, in turn, accuses Hamas of using hospitals and other health facilities as covers for its military operations. 

OCHA estimates that about 12,000 patients are in need of medical evacuation abroad. Between May 2024 and mid-January 2025, 458 patients were allowed to leave Gaza to seek treatment abroad, 276 of them children. 

I got a chance to interview children from Gaza who were undergoing cancer treatment at the King Hussein Cancer Center in Amman. The centre, founded in 2001 by royal decree, is headed by Her Royal Highness Princess Ghida Talal, a member of the Jordanian royal family – and, effectively, is an example of how the Jordanian state is involved in the support of Gazans. 

Palestinian curriculum online via JO Academy

Thousands of children who are still in Gaza are unable to go to school – according to OCHA, 88% of schools (496 out of 564) have been damaged or destroyed, meaning that 658,000 students have lost access to formal education.

JO Academy, an Amman-based online education company founded in 2014, has recorded and compressed online versions of all the classes that make up the Palestinian curriculum. Once downloaded on a mobile app, lessons are available offline so that students can learn when there’s no internet. 

As the programme provided by JO Academy is approved by the Palestinian Authority’s education ministry, students can also take exams and graduate.

JO Academy has gone even further in terms of support. Since children in Gaza are facing problems that not many teenagers face, the app also provides tutorials on first aid (for example, how to stop bleeding) and psychological help.

I spoke to Saif Altamimi, director of marketing at JO Academy.

Buying an ambulance for Gaza

When Israel launched its offensive in Gaza, many in Jordan took to the streets to demonstrate in support of Palestinians and later started raising funds to provide support for Gaza. 

“We gathered in this house. It was [mostly] a youth gathering, but there were also elderly people and even children. Immediately, we took to the streets in a solidarity march,” Wesam Mohammad Al-Rbeihat, a member of the Jordanian House of Representatives, told me about the beginnings of the ‘Sons of Al-Tafila Neighborhood’ initiative. It has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of humanitarian aid for Gaza, including food, water, medical supplies and even ambulances. 

This project has been given official permission from the Jordanian government, and its donations pass through the ​​Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organization (JHCO). This system was established “to prevent fraud and ensure transparency. There is a designated ministry responsible for overseeing the process,” Al-Rbeihat explained.