Palestinians who fled Gaza for Egypt are being scammed and exploited by fake charities

Mohammed Odeh Mahmoud, a 60-year-old Palestinian engineer, lost everything to the war in Gaza: his greenhouses, his farm and his three-story home. He fled the enclave seven months into the genocide, paying Hala Consulting and Tourism, a private Egyptian company, more than $100,000 to get his 22-member family out of Gaza. But a different kind of hardship awaited him on the other side. He paid $140 per adult for residency permits, but has been unable to renew them. “Hala just left us displaced in Egypt,” he said. “We have nothing left but God’s mercy.” Now he relies on a monthly parcel from the Egyptian Food Bank and on help from relatives. More than 115,000 Palestinians had fled Gaza to Egypt by May 2024, according to Palestinian officials. Unable to obtain residency or work legally, many have depended on charity and aid, leaving them vulnerable to those who would exploit them. Since the October 2025 ceasefire, much of that aid has dwindled, deepening their desperation. In July 2024, Haidar, who had recently arrived in Cairo from Khan Younis and asked to be identified by his first name only, received a call on his mother’s phone from someone claiming to represent a charity called “Muslims Are Brothers.” Haidar had registered his details through an online link weeks earlier, hoping for a food parcel and 10,000 Egyptian pounds (about $200) in aid. Now, the caller said, the money was ready. “He said, ‘Do you have Vodafone Cash on this number?’ I said yes. He said, ‘I’ll send you a code. Send it back to me so I can transfer the money,’” Haidar told Mondoweiss. “And he stole the whole balance.” Instead of receiving 10,000 Egyptian pounds, Haidar lost 60,000 ($1,200), everything in his mobile wallet. Mondoweiss found no organization called “Muslims Are Brothers” in the Ministry of Social Solidarity register of licensed NGOs or in the government’s other NGO databases, and it has no official page on social media. How the traps work Often posted anonymously or from fake accounts, links with the name of little-known charities circulate on WhatsApp and in Facebook groups for the Palestinian community in Egypt, the largest of which has more than 53,000 members. Those links lead to forms that ask for the head of household’s details, the size of the family, their address, a phone number, and photos of their passports. They also ask what help the family needs: rent, school fees, food or clothes. Then the calls begin. Callers promise food parcels or cash and ask for more details, or, as with Haidar, a code that gives them access to the victim’s mobile wallet. The links often stop working within weeks. One posted in February 2026 in the name of a purported aid group no longer works. Victims have few options once they have lost money. A Palestinian in Egypt without valid residency cannot file a police report or take legal action, said Mahmoud al-Roubi, an Egyptian lawyer and legal researcher. “I expect the scammers know exactly what their victims’ legal status is, and that they won’t be able to pursue them in court,” he told Mondoweiss. Many of those targeted use SIM cards registered in other people’s names, because they cannot get their own without a residency permit. That makes it even harder to recover stolen money or trace the thief, al-Roubi said. ‘Exploiting the Palestinian cause‘ K.M., a master’s student who asked to be identified only by his initials, is a Palestinian with Egyptian citizenship who spent four months in Gaza during the war. His Egyptian passport helped him leave. Hala charged him only $650, while Palestinians paid thousands of dollars. But in Egypt, he has been unable to find steady work. “Every time I apply for a job, either they reject me because my accent shows I’m Palestinian, or they exploit my situation and I work for a terrible wage,” he said. Short of money, he registered with a Palestinian charity in Egypt. He soon noticed that his details were circulating among groups he had never contacted. Callers promised food parcels in exchange for his address, the size of his family and details about his home. That information was then used in attempts to get into his mobile wallet. K.M. never lost money. A programmer by training, he recognized the trap and posted warnings in the WhatsApp groups where the links circulate. Khalil Kanoun, a Palestinian activist and researcher, arrived in Egypt in March 2024 and registered through so many aid links that he can no longer remember their names. Scammers have repeatedly tried to steal from his mobile wallet, but have so far failed. “Exploiting the Palestinian cause for personal gain, by individuals or even by states, has a long history,” he said. Scammers also target those desperate to leave Gaza. Nasser Najm, 50, has tried to get out of Gaza five times since the war began. Each time, he paid a broker. Each time, the broker disappeared. In total, he has lost $5,000. The last time was in May 2026, and he is still in Gaza. The scam trades on the medical evacuation system. Each patient approved for travel to Egypt is allowed two companions, and brokers promise to sell those places to strangers for between $1,000 and $5,000. Once they have the money, the brokers vanish, and the patient travels without them. “All the brokers are swindlers and liars,” Najm told Mondoweiss from Gaza. “Someone who wants to travel goes looking for a person with a medical referral to be added with them, pays, and gets scammed.” Like K.M., Najm has posted warnings on social media, including two Egyptian phone numbers he said were being used to scam people. “I warned everyone again and again,” he said. “Don’t pay anyone.” No safety net Samar Abu Kweik, 54, lost her home in northern Gaza to an airstrike early in the war. In early 2024, she left the enclave with her husband, 64, who is ill. She borrowed $10,000 to get them out, a sum she has been unable to repay. In Egypt, the couple lived on food parcels, vouchers and cash aid. “Here I felt I had put my dignity on the ground,” Abu Kweik said. “I started running from charity to charity asking for a food parcel, when in Gaza I had lived with honor and dignity.” That help has since dried up. Abu Kweik said they have not received any aid since the ceasefire in October 2025, and now rely on money her daughter sends from Gaza each month. “From the day they announced a truce, the aid stopped,” she said. Her experience is far from unusual. Egypt had provided $578 million worth of aid to Gaza by July 2025, according to the health minister, but Palestinians who fled across the border say support for them has dwindled. UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, does not operate in Egypt. Part of the problem, according to a source at the Palestinian embassy in Cairo, is that the aid system has changed. “We used to act as an intermediary between charities and Palestinians to deliver aid,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But [the charities] obtained lists with people’s details and started dealing with them directly.” Maryam Abu Daqqa, a Palestinian human rights activist in Egypt, said she receives a steady stream of complaints from Palestinians who arrived after October 7, 2023, and need help. She refers them to the embassy, which she said has scaled back its role over the past year. “Most Palestinians in Egypt lack basic necessities,” she said. The little aid available goes to medical cases, she added, while families struggle to cover rent, food and daily costs. Amal Agha, director general of the General Union of Palestinian Women in Egypt, said the union once acted as an intermediary between charities and families in need, but that link has been cut. It has stopped providing food aid, and now covers university fees only for female students, paid for by its members’ donations. “Care and support have dropped sharply,” she told Mondoweiss. For some, even marriage to an Egyptian has not been enough to secure legal status. Taghreed Gamal, 28, entered Egypt on a 45-day temporary permit in early 2024 and later married an Egyptian. She never renewed the permit, and she cannot regularize her status until she pays the fines she has built up for overstaying. She now owes 65,000 Egyptian pounds (about $1,300) in fines, and renewing her residency would cost another 35,000 (about $700). That brings the total to 100,000 Egyptian pounds (about $2,000), a sum she and her husband cannot afford. She had hoped that traveling to Saudi Arabia for Umrah might clear the fine, but a passport official told her she could not travel anywhere, not even back to Gaza, until she paid. “I looked for solutions, like paying in installments or getting a reduction, but there is no middle ground,” she said. This story is published in collaboration with Egab.