ROCHESTER, N.Y. — It’s been more than seven months since the conflict between Israel and Hamas started. Families with loved ones stuck living in war zones in Gaza have struggled to remain in close contact.

Shadi Abuolba and his wife, Nour, try calling their loved ones every day or two. However, families are living with no food or clean water, no consistent shelter, and no electricity or Wi-Fi to send updates overseas. The Rochester couple has lived in fear since the conflict started.

“She woke me up, said there’s something going on in Gaza,” Abuolba explained, “We can’t live our normal life. I can’t go to work. I cannot do my normal life. And she’s the same thing - she’s not able to work because we literally, every day, sit down front of the TV, watching TV and watching news and calling my family members, making sure they’re OK. It’s been very hard on us, very stressful on us.”

“People in the Gaza Strip are so depressed. When we talk with them, they are so scared and they don’t know if there is a bright future. Or if this is the end of the story,” Nour said.

The Palestinian-American pair has already lost more than 70 of their loved ones in the conflict happening in their former home.

“This is before and this is after,” Nour said, showing pictures of her childhood home. “It's destroyed. It's completely destroyed. The thing is, all people over there, don’t care about what’s happened in their homes. Just, they care about if they want to be alive or not.”

Abuolba’s brother, his wife and three kids, and Nour’s parents, four siblings and their children, are living in what Nour refers to as her former nightmare.

“It was hard for me to observe this awful thing, but, to be honest, because I’m originally from Gaza Strip, and I just moved here in 2018, so I lived before many conflicts. In 2008, when I was at high school, I think it was the first conflict that happened in Gaza Strip. I was taking an exam and the bomb happened. At that time, I lost my conscience because the bomb's 'bang' was very hard and unbelievable,” Nour remembered.

Trauma from her previous livelihood overseas came with her when she moved to the United States.

“I lived for three or four wars in Gaza Strip and it was hard because I recall that my husband, when I came here and there’s the Fourth of July here in the United States, Independence Day. I remember, they do the fireworks and everything is beautiful, but when I heard the fireworks at that time, I got too scared because it made a lot of memories come to me and I was crying,” she explained.

However, she says this conflict feels different than wars in the past.

“The current war is something different. I feel that it just would be a couple days and everything would be ended. But until now, it’s been more than 300 days. It’s more than seven months and more than 35,000 people are killed. Most of them are women and children. So it’s hard to evoke our emotions or talk about this devastating event,” Nour explained. “So when anybody asks me just to express what I’m thinking about, what I’m feeling about, it is very hard. It’s something that, to be honest, I cannot speak. But we are here just because, we have to share. We have to speak up.”

Abuolba and Nour say they have ongoing concerns of their loved ones safety after knowing the stress it brought into Nour’s childhood.

“When I contacted the American Embassy, they were kind of nice to us because they sent a message that you can evacuate your father and mother and your youngest sister that she’s under 21," Nour said. "But I have another four members of my family that more above 21. And they, one of them is married, so my father and mother can not leave behind my siblings. They are not responsible and they cannot live without them. I think this is very, very devastating."

Even seeking refuge in a country further away from the conflict is a challenge.

“I've tried several times where I have him escape Gaza to Egypt. Now the Egyptians are asking every person across the border to pay $5,000 for each person leaving Gaza. So in other words, either you pay $5,000 to get to exit Egypt and be safe, or if you don’t have any money, stay in Gaza and die,” Abuolba said. “I got my brother, his wife too. He's got three kids. Five people. So five people took about $25,000 just to enter Egypt. We don’t have that kind of money. We don’t. I got kids. I got two children. Got to pay for private school. I got bills to pay. I just don’t have the kind of money laying round to pay Egyptians to let my brother enter.”

The cost of their combined family members to cross the border adds up to more than $80,000. However, paying these dues still wouldn’t guarantee their family members safety because it’s dangerous to travel anywhere for too long, especially without supplies needed to survive, and from Egypt, Palestinians would need to continue on to Jordan, where they can obtain a green card. That would cost additional money, plus the cost of traveling to the U.S.

“$25,000 I’m paying just to let them in Egypt. That’s it. So if you want to sleep in Egypt, pay rent, food, this and that, you are on your own. And we can not bring them to the U.S. because they don’t have a visa,” Abuolba said. “Even if my brother goes to the U.S. Embassy, they're going to decline his visa, OK, because no one comes into he United States without getting the green light from the White House. So if my brother exits Gaza, he just sits in Egypt in a safe place until, we’re hoping, the war’s end.”

Abuolba and Nour have two children of their own. Their 4- and 5-year-olds are well aware and fearful from the conflict happening around their loved ones.

“Sometimes they ask me, 'you want to meet your mom? When you and her will come?' And, 'do you think your mom is in danger?' So, they keep asking, they keep asking and I don’t know if everything would be OK, but absolutely, they understand everything,” Nour said.

She recently graduated with her doctorate degree. It was an accomplishment her family was looking forward to celebrating with her in New York. It’s another occasion taken away from them due to the dangers happening in Gaza.

“It is very hard, you know, because we were supposed to celebrate together here. And because I also I got my certification in April, and it was a precise date, but they couldn’t. We couldn’t leave Gaza Strip and leave behind their kids. It’s very hard for them as a mother and father, just to think of all what we are thinking about, just we want to make all my family members, all of the kids safe,” she said. “I remember all of my family members waited for this graduation moment and my father told me we will meet each other. We want to organize big celebrations and all of them were proud of me to reach this point, but, we cannot do it. We don’t care about all of our birthdays, our anniversary days or graduations. We're just waiting. We are just waiting to celebrate with them. We hope that we can meet them again.”

The couple awaits a safe haven for their loved ones, or an end to the war.

“We keep our fingers crossed, you know, to get a couple of people from Gaza to the U.S. as a refugee and get them here safe and stop the war, stop the blood on the street, stop this and that. It’s just too much,” Abuolba said.