Alaa leans back in his chair after a hearty iftar at Shanglish, a Sydney restaurant that has been offering free dinners to Palestinian refugees.
“Without their generosity, we would struggle to eat at all,” he says.
“I have brought my family here three times this week, each time they are more than accommodating. They even call me and ask if I am coming today. We are indebted to them.”
Alaa has asked to remain anonymous, concerned that his words could affect his family’s application for refugee status. He is on a student visa and brought his family to Sydney on visitor visas as the death toll from Israel’s onslaught on Gaza continued to climb. More than 32,000 people are reported to have died so far.
As his three children quietly eat their dinner, and with a buzzing buffet in the background, Alaa explains how difficult it has been since they arrived.
“Since they are on visitor visas, they do not receive any kind of support – we are out here on our own, trying to make it work.”
Arrivals from Palestine have been trickling into Australia, many on visitor visas and without legal or financial support.
Into this void have stepped community organisations. Some have organised donation drives to provide people with essential items including clothes and furniture; others have worked to provide food, alongside legal and settlement services.
Shanglish, a restaurant and cafe chain in Bankstown, has shut down one of its branches and repurposed it as a soup kitchen for the holy month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast from dawn until sunset.
Community Care Kitchen organised the recommissioning of Shanglish, paying the rent and staff salaries for a month and using it to provide families from Gaza food packages to break their fast.
Sana Karanouh, one of the leading volunteers at the organisation, says the repurposed cafe cannot meet the demand.
“We are spending upwards of $5,000 a day feeding up to 45 families a night,” she says. “We have faced an influx of people, struggling without government support and amid this cost-of-living crisis.
“The families who are fed by the program are extremely grateful, they tell us it’s the only good thing happening to them at the moment.”
Karanouh explains that families register with the organisation, then call to place an order in the morning that they can pick up just before sunset.
“On the first two days of Ramadan, our phone lines completely collapsed due to the demand,” she says. “We tend to get different people every day, different families. These are people who were not poor in Gaza but have been through hell.”
Karanouh says there is “huge community backing” but more can be done to support the arrivals.
Karima Hazim couldn’t agree more. The head of Sunday Kitchen, a cooking school that specialises in Lebanese dishes, launched a donation drive called Bake for Gaza, where volunteers are invited to help her bake and sell boxes of ma’moul – a Levantine biscuit baked on special occasions, such as for Eid or Lent.
All profit goes towards supporting families arriving from Gaza. Hazim says she has been overwhelmed by the demand.
“I thought I’d be baking 20 to 30 boxes,” she says. “The first night I put it on Instagram, I got 100 orders. We have had over 200 orders. People are looking for ways to show their support.
“Some of the people ordering don’t even know what ma’moul is, they are just looking for some way to support people from Gaza. Many people pick up the boxes in tears. They know what is going on, they are grieving.”
Hazim says she has assembled a group of 10 to 15 volunteers – “complete strangers until now” – to complete the orders with donated ingredients at a commercial kitchen provided for free.
“We know we’d struggle to get any donations into Gaza, so this is what we can do now. Some of the money is handed directly to the arrivals, to buy whatever they want or need.”
Hazim says the donations have been used to pay for rent, clothes and essentials.
“Gaza has been on everyone’s mind for six months. It’s been a long time, of grief and misery. We had to do something.”
