From London to Deir al Balah: A Palestinian in the UK cycles for Gaza

Tareq Al-Qazzaz is a Palestinian based in London who recently completed "The Hope Cycle" — a 1,000-mile, 12-day sponsored bike ride across England. It's his second ride: last year's journey helped pull him out of a period of deep sadness and survivor's guilt over the war in Gaza. This year, he set out again, hosted along the way by Jewish, Palestinian, Arab, and British families connected to Friends of Standing Together, raising funds for displaced families in Gaza and for Standing Together's work. We sat down with him to talk about the road, the people who opened their homes to him, and what he's carrying forward.

Yonatan: How did you find Friends of Standing Together — and what made you want to search for a Jewish-Palestinian group specifically, rather than just being active in the Palestinian movement?

Tareq: Honestly, it was Google. I searched "Jewish Palestinian peace group London," because I'd moved to London a year and a half ago, from Edinburgh. In Scotland there isn't much activism in that space — it's mostly pro-Palestinian activism, not much Jewish or Israeli organizing. The Jewish presence is much bigger in London — there's a Jewish community in Northwest and North London, where I live, and at the beginning that felt a bit uneasy — all my neighbors are Jewish, and I'm Palestinian. But I thought: let's try to mix with the community. There wasn't a bigger reason than that — my neighbors are Jewish, and I wanted to connect with my neighbors. Otherwise, honestly, it would have eaten at me.

Yonatan: I understand — I'm living in Jaffa now, so a lot of my neighbors are Arab. It's important to me too, not to be a stranger.

Tareq: Exactly. If you're not going to love them, you're going to hate them — there's no middle ground. I'd rather love them.

Yonatan: You're originally from Gaza, right — when did you move to the UK?

Tareq: Yes. I left Gaza in 2020. I was in France until 2023, doing my Master's there — two years in France, then a year in Dublin, Ireland — and then I came to the UK from Dublin, for both marriage and work. I got a job here, and my wife has a job here too.

Yonatan: I'd love to ask you a bit about the ride. I know this was your second time doing a fundraising ride, and you mentioned on the blog you created on your fundraising page that you went into that first ride from a place of “depression and survivor’s guilt.” Did you experience the same thing this time around?

Tareq: I think we're still in a dark place — we do what we can to help ourselves and our families, but it's not like we're out of that cycle. We're all depressed, honestly. Maybe last time it was purely depression; this time there was more activism in it. But the main motivation was fundraising — there are a lot of people who need that money, and you try to be creative about how to help family and friends. I actually could have done this ride with a Palestinian-British organization — I think it's called Ta'awon— who run an orphans' program and offered to promote the ride. Honestly, financially, it probably would have done better — it "rings a bigger bell." And I knew from the start there was a risk in working with Standing Together, because it's not seen well in parts of the Arab community — some see it as whitewashing the occupation. So I made my decision knowing that. Some Arab friends asked me why I was doing it.

Yonatan: And why did you decide to do it anyway?

Tareq: Honestly, I didn't care what people would say — within limits. It's hard to explain exactly how I function, but that's the truth. I'd also tested Standing Together myself — I'd seen their activism and their work, and I don't think they're whitewashing anything. If they are, I don't think it's intentional. It's a left-wing Israeli group, and any activism from the left under a right-wing government risks being used that way — the right can point to it and say "look, we're a democracy, we have a left wing too." But that doesn't mean it's intentional. No one in Standing Together wakes up thinking, "I'm going to whitewash the occupation."

Yonatan: Right — on the outside they can say "we're a democracy," while internally doing what they can to silence people and call them traitors. But going back to your decision — if your main goal was raising money for Gaza, and you're saying you could have gotten more support going with the other organization, why did you still choose to partner with Standing Together?

Tareq: It's not that it would have been five times better — maybe twice, maybe one and a half times as much. But in the end, there was a message I needed to deliver — for me, too. I'm Palestinian, I'm from Gaza. If you've seen my Instagram, you'll know I'm extremely critical of Israel. But while fighting Israel, I need to keep reminding myself this isn't about the Jewish or Israeli people — it's a fascist regime I need to fight, and I'll probably need to do that alongside some people inside Israel. Working with Israelis was a reminder to myself that this isn't about hating a group of people — it's about fighting a horrible regime. That's what I'm doing. So it was a message to myself too: don't hate the people, hate the regime. The fundraiser might have done better with someone else — I don't know for certain — but I felt much better doing it with the Jewish community.

So in the end, it's both. It's the middle ground. It was actually healing — you can see the donors' names when people donate — and it was really healing to see Jewish names on that list. That has nothing to do with anyone else; that was between me and myself. It was good for me to see that.

Yonatan: Did that surprise you?

Tareq: Not shocked — I know there are good Jewish people out there, so it wasn't a shock. It was just good to see. I remember meeting someone named Jonathan, British Jewish — we had coffee, and afterward he asked, "Did I change your opinion about Jewish people?" I told him: I already know there are good Jewish people. You're not shocking me with your goodness. There are good people everywhere — there are good people in hell. If we both end up there, we'll find them.

Yonatan: I could ask a lot more about this — I'm genuinely curious — but I also want to talk about the ride itself. Can you tell me what a typical day looked like?

Tareq: Simple: you wake up, stretch, eat carbs, and cycle until you reach your destination. Then you stretch again and sleep. Wake up, stretch, cycle, eat carbs — repeat. It takes discipline, but I'm a fit person and a decent cyclist — I belong to a cycling club here in London, so I know the maintenance side too: changing tires, fixing wheels, all of that. It's a passion of mine. So a typical day was pretty much that — the physical part barely changed. What was different was the mornings: how each host prepared things, the conversations, since some people were more curious than others and asked more questions. The hosts varied; the cycling didn't.

Yonatan: I want to ask about the hosts in a second — but first, you're on the road for hours, alone with your bike and your thoughts. What was going through your mind during that time?

Tareq: I usually kept myself busy listening to podcasts — mostly politics, so nothing particularly happy in my ears. There's no company out there, so sometimes music instead, and I'd take breaks to call my family. They knew about the fundraiser and were very encouraging — I'd get the typical "mom advice": be careful. She checked on me every three hours — "where are you, did you make it?" My wife did too, even though she was visiting family in Pakistan at the time.

There were moments, in the middle of nowhere, where I'd think: what am I actually doing? Especially after about day five — what's the point, how is this actually going to help anyone? But you keep pushing anyway, partly because people are following along on social media and expecting you to finish.

Sometimes I'd stop and think: the damage is too big to be fixed by a bike ride. It's almost a joke — right now, Egypt is asking for $30,000 just to get one person out of Gaza. After two weeks of cycling, this campaign might not even be enough to get one person out. So there were moments it genuinely felt absurd. But then you remind yourself: you do what you can, and that's it.

Yonatan: Are your parents still in Gaza?

Tareq: Yes, in Deir al-Balah. They're relatively lucky, I'd say. My brothers were in the north, in Gaza City — they've had it much worse. I think people in the West sometimes see this from a Western lens — "he's doing charity, this is great" — while people in Gaza look at it more on the ground. I think the campaign had raised around $20,000 at one point, and a friend of mine said something like, "Good — that won't even get my kid out." Because smuggling costs around $30,000 for an adult and $20,000 for a child, since there's apparently a "discount" for children. So he said, essentially, "nice work, but that won't get even one child out." And he had a point — you can't really tell him he's wrong.

At the same time, once the campaign started getting shared and reposted, people would reach out — "please help us, please help us" — and my inbox filled up. Most of the people reaching out were people I already knew, or people I'd been introduced to through Standing Together. But I was mainly trying to help people I already knew, and it's hard, because I had to tell people honestly: I can't help everyone, the resources are limited. That actually became its own source of depression while cycling — seeing clearly that your effort can't do nearly enough.

Yonatan: You were hosted by a mix of families — Palestinian British, Jewish, Israeli. Is there a specific moment, conversation, or meal that stands out?

Tareq: Mostly I was hosted by Jewish people — Jewish Brits, mainly, though I stayed with Israelis in Coventry, Oxford, Cambridge, and London. So four of the twelve stops were Israeli Jewish hosts, and the rest were British Jewish hosts — plus a Syrian-Irish family in Canterbury and a Palestinian family in Swansea, so two stops with Arab hosts. Beyond the hosts themselves, curious guests would often stop by too — sometimes Israelis, coming to meet "the Palestinian guy," or "the Gazan guy."

One that stands out is the Israeli family in Oxford. Dr. Avishai and his wife Orit — they had four kids. It was simple, in a way: I'd never stayed in an Israeli home before, never slept under an Israeli roof. I was a bit nervous on the way there — not "nervous I might get hurt," more just nervous, a good kind of nervous.

They were hospitable — they cooked a lot of food, I ate well. His mother was lovely, the kids were great. We had conversations about people back home. I think it was in that conversation he told me he'd never go back to Israel.

He seemed to have lost hope in the idea of real change happening inside Israel. He put it something like: you can talk to Israelis about anything, and they're completely normal — until you mention the Palestinians, and it's like a different person appears. They'll play with your dog, tell you your kids are adorable, seem completely civilized — and then the moment Palestinians come up, that changes. He said he probably wouldn't be very popular if he still lived in Israel — I might honestly be more welcome there than he would be. He said he has four kids and doesn't want them growing up with that mentality, which is part of why he moved to the UK.

So it wasn't that I was "challenged" staying in an Israeli home — if anything, he was more left-wing than I am. I found myself telling him to calm down, that it's not that bad, and he'd insist, "yes, it is that bad." But really, there was nothing dramatic about it — it wasn't some deeply profound, life-changing conversation. It was a normal conversation: how are people back home, how's Israeli society doing — they were just people. What made it notable was simply that they were the first Israelis I'd ever stayed with.

Do you want to support Tareq? His fundraiser is still accepting donations: https://chuffed.org/project/hope-cycle 95% percent of donations go to the GNS, a direct aid network that transfers money safely, directly to Gazan families in need.