The timing was coincidental. When Tom Kellner and Seba AbuDaqa logged into their first virtual Israel-Palestine dialogue session in October 2023—a program they’d signed up for weeks earlier—Hamas’s attack on Israel had just occurred less than 24 hours prior.
The program was meant to connect Israeli and Palestinian expatriates living abroad. But as Israel launched its assault on Gaza and the death toll mounted, AbuDaqa, a Gaza native living in Munich, Germany, found the group sessions increasingly difficult. With family and friends in Gaza, she felt helpless sitting in Munich while they were under attack. Kellner, an Israeli academic based in Berlin, reached out privately to offer support.
What began as a gesture of solidarity evolved into something more lasting.
“We both are very similar in that we are extremely proactive,” Kellner says. “We wanted to do something other than talking, even though talking is great. But we both wanted to take action.”
In January 2024, Kellner and AbuDaqa founded Clean Shelter, a German-registered nonprofit providing sanitation infrastructure and other essential aid to displaced Palestinians in Gaza.
Clean Shelter has so far constructed over 1,000 toilets, showers, tents, and community spaces serving 10,000 internally displaced persons, or IDPs. The organization has also coordinated daily water deliveries to thousands of families and installed solar-powered desalination units. All of this work is carried out by local volunteers—many of whom AbuDaqa knew through family and friends in Gaza—under the leadership of their team manager, Ahmed Sherif.
Clean Shelter has found enthusiastic supporters at Duke University, where around a dozen Jewish, Christian, and Muslim students are earning academic credit by volunteering with the organization. The students assist with everything from grant writing to communications strategy.
During a three-day visit to Durham this week, Kellner and AbuDaqa are meeting these student volunteers in person for the first time and discussing plans to continue the partnership next academic year. They’re also giving a public talk about their work at the Nicholas School of the Environment at 3 p.m. on Friday.
Ahead of their talk, Kellner and AbuDaqa sat down with the INDY to discuss their unique partnership, the challenges of humanitarian work in an active conflict zone, and how Triangle residents can support their mission.
INDY: Could you tell me about the work Clean Shelter is doing in Gaza and how it’s being carried out?
ABUDAQA: We started with constructing toilets in IDP camps in Rafah, and then we had to move because it was not safe to continue working in Rafah. Then we moved to Al-Mawasi and started constructing toilets and tents and providing equipment for the tents, like mattresses, pillows, blankets.
Later on, we financed our first IDP camp, and it serves as a model of how camps can be, because people deserve to stay comfortable while they are displaced. We actually established a community around it. We established a common space for dining and for educational activities. We coordinated with other organizations to distribute food kits. We also distributed hygiene kits.
When winter came, we were responsible for fixing the tents, covering them with plastic to prevent leaking rainwater. We also rehabilitated 15 schools in the south of Gaza that were partially damaged. We didn’t repair them fully, but we made them insulated to keep them warm, whether for IDPs residing in schools or for students.
We aim to mitigate the pain of displacement by providing shelter and sanitation. We focus on sanitation because we see the diseases and health crisis in Gaza caused by lack of nutrition as well as water pollution.
Have you faced difficulties getting supplies and aid to people in Gaza?
KELLNER: Because we’re such a small organization without a board, we don’t need to ask anyone for permission. We just need to decide and act. Because our team is there on the ground, we can do things really fast. If we can purchase things inside of Gaza, we will always prioritize that, because this means we can do it from one day to the next, even though this may not be the most cost effective approach.
On the other hand, there was a point where you couldn’t buy anything in Gaza anymore—there was just nothing left. So we organized a big truck with thousands of jackets for children and warm blankets to be delivered into Gaza. This was really nerve-wracking because it took so much time and there were so many unknowns that at some point we worried the truck would arrive when winter was already over. Luckily this didn’t happen and we were able to distribute all these items in January. But this just reflects the nature of what is happening in Gaza—the circumstances change from day to day and week to week, and the needs also change very quickly. We as a small organization have to be extremely fast, extremely dynamic. We need to be flexible so we can respond as fast as possible.
In December, we established a team in northern Gaza, in Gaza City, because the ceasefire allowed us to access this area that had been too dangerous before. We prioritize our team’s safety—we won’t send anyone into dangerous areas. But we realized these people had literally nothing, so we began constructing toilets there and providing water. We also purchased thermal suits for women in northern Gaza. When women have to flee quickly, they think about their children first and often don’t pack for themselves.
ABUDAQA: It has been challenging. For the water, we were trying to find desalination units and provide all IDPs with clean water for drinking. We only were able to buy one, and that was not enough, so we continued buying water from a water provider. It was expensive, but we could afford it day-to-day. If they asked us to pay for a month or a year, we wouldn’t have made it. But because we were able to pay in installments, like week by week, we were able to make it. It wasn’t easy because it’s a lot of money, and we’re just a small organization.
How do you maintain communication with your team on the ground?
ABUDAQA: In the beginning, there were days I couldn’t contact them for a week or five days, but now we can talk every day, wherever they are in the field. Our communication has become like family—we have daily calls. When there’s an idea, we put it in the group and discuss it with everyone. Ideas mainly come from them, but if we have ideas here, we communicate with them and ask them to navigate how feasible it is.
Your partnership is somewhat unique—an Israeli and a Palestinian working together during a time of intense conflict. Have you learned anything from each other that has surprised you or changed your perspective?
KELLNER: When I talk to Seba, I don’t think about her as a Palestinian, and I don’t think of her as a representative of anything other than herself. I think Seba feels the same about me and our organization is built upon this value. We are political people, but we believe in action, and for that, we are programmatic. This means that we don’t have to agree on everything, not only politically, but also when it comes to working together. We’re not afraid of disagreement.
I’m not very nationalistic. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both Seba and I don’t live in Israel or Palestine. When something horrible happens in Israel, I don’t think she’s responsible. When horrible things are happening in Gaza, I have myself a sense of responsibility and shame, but I hope Seba doesn’t think I’m responsible—Seba?
ABUDAQA: No. Tom’s mentality and mindset is close to mine. We complement each other. There are different things about us, but we have similar mindset and similar motivations, and that allows us to work smoothly with each other, not because of nationality.
KELLNER: I also think maybe it’s anecdotal, but for me, a lot of it is that Seba and I are going through similar life experiences as immigrants in Germany. Of course, it’s not the same, and we have different identity politics in Germany, but we’re both kind of detached from where we came from. When we talk about Israel and Palestine, we share a lot in common. We have a similar mentality. We talk about foods that we both ate as kids-
ABUDAQA: Songs we love.
KELLNER: Yes, songs. There is, in a way, this narrative of estrangement, but it’s only a narrative, you know, it’s one perspective. We grew up in the same region, we had the same landscapes, we experienced the same weather. It’s not all conflict.
INDY: How have Duke students been able to help Clean Shelter’s mission?
KELLNER: The students are amazing—creative, motivated, super engaged. One of the students took ownership of finding us a fiscal sponsor in the states. As a European organization, we’re tax deductible in Europe, but for people from the U.S. who want to donate, it’s important that their donations are tax deductible, too. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. One of the students took this upon herself and succeeded amazingly. We’ve had a fiscal sponsor since December 2024.
Another example is our annual report for 2024. We have students helping us curate all our newsletters, go over our social media and updates, and see what we actually did.
Also: We’ve gotten a lot of visibility in Europe, and in Israel as well, but no matter how much we tried in the past year to get press coverage in the States, we really failed. So this was one of the things we tasked our students with: to help us get more exposure. You’re our first American interview.
How do you envision Clean Shelter’s role evolving as the situation in Gaza continues to develop?
KELLNER: We try to be optimistic, but realistically, the most conservative estimations are something between 10 and 14 years until Gaza is inhabitable again. This means that people will need water, toilets, shelter—and people deserve a respectable shelter, a comfortable one. We talk about this a lot because there’s this conception where people who are displaced and live in camps, they have a tent and that’s good enough. But people want to get back to their homes with air conditioning and running water. And they deserve to.
We really do hope that at some point Clean Shelter will not be needed in Gaza. That would be amazing. Realistically, I don’t see that happening in the next year or two at least. What we plan to do once things are running smoothly, we could, and we believe that we should, transfer our model of work to other disaster areas. We think we developed a very good model for rapid response, and it could be very easily transferred to other areas. It just depends on the ability to create a very tight network of people on the ground.
How can people in the Triangle get involved?
KELLNER: Because we are dependent on individual donations, we are also very much focused on our visibility and outreach. We invite people not only to donate—we invite them to follow us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, follow us on LinkedIn, share our posts, subscribe to our newsletter. I think this is the first thing, because the more people know about what we’re doing, the better.
If people have questions, if people have suggestions, if people just want to reach out and tell us what they think, they can do this through our website. It reaches Seba and me—we’re the ones reading these emails, and we always answer. We really welcome people to communicate with us.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.