23 January
Today, for the first time this year, I was able to pray the Friday congregational prayer in the mosque. I hugged many people today; I hadn't seen many of them for weeks and it was as if we had met after years.
Everyone had mixed emotions, both happy and sad. Ahmad, one of my best friends told me: "I am happy because you are safe. But I am sad because of the great loss of people."
Yesterday I met John Holmes, Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and
Emergency Relief for the UN, who told me he had been reading my diary.
There was a lot of discussion about the vast amounts of destruction and damage.
Adding to this is the pain in the hearts of people who lost loved ones and saw everything they owned destroyed.
Homeless help
I am sure the houses and buildings that have been destroyed will be rebuilt - but what about all the shattered lives? Who will help to rebuild them?
There are now an estimated 30,000 homeless people.
During an Islamic Relief distribution of food parcels to the Jabaliya refugee camp, I met a father called Adel, with his wife and little two children in one of the shelters.
I asked him why he hadn't returned home.
He told me that he went back but found it totally destroyed.
During our conversation we talked about his life before the bombings - he was jobless and poor.
Adel is one of the 1.3 million Gazans dependent upon international food assistance to keep him and his family alive. Now he doesn't have money to rent a flat. Adel's story is similar to thousands of people in Gaza.
I am proud of the work Islamic Relief has done over these last few weeks. I remember seeing three little sisters break into a smile when our aid team delivered them a food parcel.
Inside, amongst other things, was some halwa, a traditional sweet. This had been enough to draw smiles to their faces.
We have spent close to three million dollars in our emergency response so far and we are stepping up our aid work on the ground. During the last three weeks we have delivered 11,000 food parcels for 12 UN shelters in Gaza, Rafah and Khan Younis.
Each food parcel includes rice, sugar, lentils, tomato paste, beans, canned meat and jam.
We also provided Gaza hospitals with more than 4,000kg of frozen meat, as well as tonnes of various types of food, enough to last a month.
Hospital supplies
The hospitals are one of our main focus areas.
We have been able to supply them with trolleys, ECGs, infusion pumps, patient monitors for intensive care units, anaesthesia machines, ventilators and monitors for operation rooms, urgent medical spare parts and other equipment.
Islamic Relief was able to bring in seven ambulances including one intensive care unit and one mobile hospital from the Egyptian border crossing.
We dropped off 1,400 nappies to the paediatric hospital. We have also supplied thousands of gallons of water to shelters and distributed over 3,000 blankets.
This is just some of the work we have been doing. In many ways the real work is beginning now. It is only now that we can assess the real damage to Gaza, as all areas are now accessible.
The UN has said it will cost billions to rebuild Gaza. This is something that aid agencies alone cannot do.
We need to meet the immediate needs of people, to provide them with food, water, shelter, medicine and blankets.
The help of the entire world community is needed to rebuild Gaza.