It's a reunion 10 months in the making.

Khalid AlMassri’s six children and wife escaped the war in Gaza and landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport this month, reuniting with Khalid, who made it here on a green card right after the war began.

"I'm so happy to be here with my dad, with my family,” said 17-year-old Dalia AlMassri, one of Khalid’s daughters.

The family of eight is now settled into a three-bedroom Jersey City apartment. Staten Islander Najla Khass helped make it all happen.

“To me, I’m helping family, even though they’re not related to me, but I am helping families that want what I wanted back in 1988,” Khass said.

Khass, who was born in Gaza, came to the U.S. more than three decades ago. She’s helped refugee families from around the world, but says this one is personal.

Khass helped secure the apartment, some money to help them and toys for the kids through the nonprofit Islamic Circle of North America, or ICNA Relief New Jersey, where she is the refugee resettlement project manager. She also helped them file the paperwork for their green cards.

“I have water, I have electricity, I have a roof over my head, I have a house, and I’m safe, but in reality they’re not safe over there. They live every second of their life in fear,” said Sali AlMassri, Khalid’s wife, in Arabic through a translator.

The "they" Sali is talking about: her extended family members still in Gaza. She and her children were among the hundreds of thousands of refugees lined up to get into Egypt right after the war began. They eventually did, and all she brought with her was the keys to her home in Gaza — a home now destroyed in the war.

“They leave their memories, they leave family members that they worry and care about, and they have no means of communication with them,” Khass said. 

Now all that’s left is hope. Khalid works as a Domino’s delivery driver now, trying to provide for his family members who are with him.

“Here it’s so different, that you are going to sleep safely, you don’t feel afraid of getting bombing or something like that,” Dalia said.

Dalia’s sister, 16-year-old Rania AlMassri, chimed in about what she’s most excited about now that she’s in the U.S.

“I’m happy to go to school, because I didn’t go to school [for] one years,” she said.

This is the seventh family from Gaza that Khass has helped to resettle in America. She’s already working on the next one.

“It’s just a long, long process,” said Khass, who wishes she could help more Gazans. "There’s more that need, and more that deserve to live, and to be free. It’s not just in America, it should be anywhere, it should be where they are right now, but they have to flee to another country to feel safe.”