Americans Say The U.S. Government Is Abandoning Their Relatives In Gaza

Hundreds of close relatives of American citizens are stuck in Gaza amid heavy Israeli bombardment and growing mass starvation ― and their family members in the U.S. say the government is doing nowhere near enough to help.

In addition to evacuating U.S. citizens themselves ― more than 300 of whom are still in Gaza ― the Biden administration has publicly pledged to help the spouses and parents of Americans exit Gaza through its southern border with Egypt. The State Department has extended that pledge to include unmarried children and siblings of Americans who are younger than 21 and to the spouses and under-21 children of green card holders.

But efforts to get those individuals on the daily lists of people permitted to exit Gaza via the Rafah Crossing into Egypt are slow, confusing and unpredictable, several members of affected families told HuffPost. Many of them worry their family members will be killed in Israeli airstrikes or succumb to Gaza’s growing health crisis before they can get the assistance they were promised, and many observers say the U.S. is doing too little to provide even limited aid to those stuck in Gaza.

“Whatever the United States is doing, it’s not helping Americans leave,” said Susan Abdelsalaam, an Indiana resident whose husband of 42 years traveled to Gaza in September to visit relatives he hadn’t seen in more than a decade. He was still there on Oct. 7, when an attack by Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis, and Israel in turn began a retaliatory military campaign in Gaza (which has so far killed more than 17,000 people, a large proportion of them women and children, according to the United Nations). Roughly 90% of the Gazan population is now displaced. Aid, food and clean water are scarce, and people are unable to find shelter as Israeli bombardment continues to rain on civilians.

Like many Americans with family in Gaza, once it became clear a war had begun, Abdelsalaam filled out State Department forms to request assistance to evacuate her husband. Since then, her husband has tried to leave Gaza through the Rafah Crossing three times and been rejected each time, losing more faith in his government with each denial, she said. She told HuffPost the lack of support has left her relying on Facebook groups with other Americans who also have families stuck in Gaza for ideas on how to help her husband.

Several U.S. citizens with relatives trapped in the besieged strip said in the absence of effective official guidance, people are discussing ways to get on the Rafah exit list by bribing Egyptians with hundreds or even thousands of dollars. It’s hard to balance the fear of being scammed, and depriving families of the limited cash they have on hand in a war zone, with the fear of losing loved ones, they say.

“I’m sad that I’m not being helped by people I’ve voted for,” said Moh Ghraiz, who lives in Illinois and is trying to help his parents and siblings flee Gaza. A month after he submitted their names, only his mother’s name has made it onto the Rafah exit list, though his father is also eligible under the State Department’s terms, a reflection of the inconsistencies many interviewees described. He recounted multiple frustrating calls with the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, saying diplomats are reading off scripts rather than expressing empathy and have refused to transfer him to more senior personnel.

“It’s unfair not to help these people and to help other people around the world, Ukrainians and Israelis and whoever else,” Ghraiz told HuffPost. “I’m a good citizen. My background is clear. I expect my Congress, my government to help me to help my family. These are the times when I really need the help.”

Last week, the State Department shut down the online intake form it previously maintained to gather information about Americans and others eligible for U.S. help evacuating from Gaza. The department has acknowledged internally that Israeli authorities have prevented some eligible people from leaving Gaza, according to diplomatic cables viewed by HuffPost, and U.S. officials have privately shared that assessment with some U.S. citizen family members in informal conversations.

“The Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas. We continue to work in partnership with Egypt and Israel towards safe passage out of Gaza for U.S. citizens, LPRs [legal permanent residents], and their immediate family members. So far, we have assisted almost 1,300 U.S. citizens, LPRs, and family members to depart Gaza through the Rafah crossing into Egypt,” a State Department spokesperson told HuffPost via email, saying the intake form was not the only way for Americans to seek assistance for relatives. “We are aware that this is a difficult situation for U.S. citizens, LPRs, and their families who are seeking to depart Gaza, and we are doing what we can to assist. There is no second-class U.S. citizen ― an American is an American.”

Meanwhile, humanitarian groups are expressing unprecedented alarm about the worsening conditions for Gaza’s population of 2.3 million. “As the leaders of some of the world’s largest global humanitarian organizations, we have seen nothing like the siege of Gaza,” the leaders of Mercy Corps, Oxfam America, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Refugees International, and Save the Children Fund wrote in a New York Times op-ed published on Monday.

Aid workers say the U.S. can and should do far more to speed up the flow of assistance into the region through Egypt, and they are unsure why the Biden administration is failing to do so. David Satterfield, a retired ambassador who President Joe Biden appointed as a special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues one week into the war, has not responded to requests for meetings with major humanitarian organizations, officials at three groups told HuffPost.

A State Department spokesperson told HuffPost that Satterfield and his team “have engaged with a number of humanitarian groups doing important work across the region.”

“We have worked with all partners to significantly increase …the flow of aid. Both Israel and Egypt have expanded inspection and logistics capacity for aid delivery, in addition to the U.N.,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “We also want to get to a point where more commercial goods are able to enter Gaza. We have been working on these very complex issues tirelessly and continue to do so.”

Yet experts say they are disappointed the procedures for bringing aid into Gaza are still deeply flawed more than two months into the war. Food and water shortage is putting many at risk of infection and even death. Photos portray civilians standing on long lines for water and supermarket shelves that are bare. Aid organizations have struggled to deliver life-saving necessities. Last month, barely 200 aid trucks per day crossed at Rafah ― an underwhelming count far short of what experts said was needed ― during the weeklong cease-fire. However, since the fighting resumed, the number of vehicles has since dropped, with some days no aid being delivered at all.

“Getting the logistics right can help alleviate human suffering, and I don’t think the United States has been effective on either the policy or the logistics and the operations of aid delivery,” said Dave Harden, who led the U.S. Agency for International Development operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank between 2013 and 2016.

For relatives of those suffering because of American policy failures, the daily pain is nearly unbearable.

“We’re living in the greatest country in the world ― I’m sure there’s something they can do,” said Heiam Alsawalhi of Massachusetts. Alsawalhi’s sister and her family of eight are sheltering in one room not far from the Egyptian border, and send her daily updates of their attempts to remain alive.

“Everyone comes to me because I am the American citizen here. They think I can do wonders. I wish I could do something,” Alsawalhi said.

Yousef Bashir, who currently resides in Washington, D.C., visited Gaza last year for the first time in more than a decade and was thrilled to see his childhood haunts in better condition than they had been back in the Second Intifada of 2000-2005, during which an Israeli soldier shot him in the spine. After he recovered, he moved to the U.S.

“The farms are green again; the olive trees are big again,” he recalls thinking during that trip.

On Oct. 6, he texted his mother and told her he planned to visit again this November so she could meet his new baby, now 10 months old. Instead, by Oct. 8, he was submitting her details to the State Department for possible evacuation through Rafah. Bashir’s mother did not and still does not know he made plans for her departure from Gaza, where their family has lived for generations. But with bombs falling near their home and tanks less than a mile away, he felt it was vital she had the option.

The Department finally sent approval this week ― misspelling her name in an error that could bar her possible exit if she is ever able to travel from her home to the Rafah Crossing, a challenging prospect given the ongoing bombardment.

Many of the families affected say they feel dehumanized by the Biden administration’s response to the problem.

Jehad Zakaria, in Chicago, wants to evacuate his father, who as a legal permanent resident has a green card. He said he trusted the government at first, following its protocols, but has since been shocked by its disorganization.

Zakaria said there was a “complete detachment from anything on the ground” from American officials he interacted with. The entire experience has made him rethink whether or not he wants to stay in the U.S.

“I’m going to retire, and I’m leaving this country. I’m done,” said Zakaria, a 35-year-old neurosurgeon. “They don’t care about my family.”

Yasmeen Elagha, who is also in Chicago, told HuffPost that in talking to U.S. officials about her 10 relatives stuck in the Gazan city of Khan Younis ― a group that includes two American citizens ― she has seen “how apathetic the government is to your life if you’re a Palestinian.”

Together with Abdelsalaam, Elagha on Wednesday also filed a lawsuit in federal court against the government over the issue, alleging the U.S. dodged its responsibilities. “They are 100% choosing one side fully and wholeheartedly and cutting off their own citizens,” she said. She described how last week, her U.S. citizen cousins went to a grocery store that was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike just minutes after they left.

Like most Americans with family ties to Gaza, Elagha has elderly relatives there who are especially vulnerable.

Ghraiz said the approval for his mother to leave Gaza was moot given she is unable to travel to the Rafah Crossing by herself due to medical issues. It’s a reason why he is also pushing the U.S. to get his otherwise-ineligible sisters and his brother ― with whom he runs a volunteer dance group for Gazan children ― on the list to exit.

“No one deserves to live under that dire situation,” said Alsawalhi, who wants the U.S. to expand its eligibility for evacuation assistance to help relatives of American citizens like her sister, who she described as struggling with the recent onset of winter. She left home in northern Gaza in October based on Israeli orders without taking sufficient warm clothing and blankets, and aid agencies are not providing blankets to displaced people, Alsawalhi said, noting the closest alternative are the shrouds provided to wrap corpses.

The State Department is currently not budging on its restrictions for who it will help.

“We do not plan to update or expand [our] parameters,” the department spokesperson told HuffPost via email. “If elderly parents have mobility or medical issues that make it difficult for them to travel to the border, we recommend that other family or friends assist them as far as the border. Consular personnel from Embassy Cairo are available to assist on the Egyptian side of the border. We recognize that the decision to stay or leave has been difficult for many families.”

The journey through the Rafah Crossing is complex, uncomfortable and takes multiple hours, per people who have previously used it.

A State Department official described internal frustration with the agency’s handling of the evacuation file. Officials have been told they cannot reveal to U.S. citizens that Israeli authorities are blocking their relatives from being included on the exit lists. In internal messaging, they are instructed to tell citizens it may be safer for their family members to stay where they are, the official said, acknowledging that the U.S. cannot even ensure safe passage for people heading to the Rafah Crossing.

“The State Department has completely failed these Americans, and it’s created a class of citizens that are being treated differently and that’s what has been the biggest source of despair,” said Maria Kari, a lawyer with the Arab American Civil Rights League who is representing Elagha and Abdelsalaam. “We’ve had a complete breakdown of the government’s responsibility to protect its own. What a nightmare for these people to have to deal with while worrying that their loved ones are going to be killed in a bombing any second.”

With thousands of people linked to the U.S. stuck in Gaza, the U.S. is punching well below its weight in addressing the intense humanitarian needs there, aid workers say.

The system for delivering supplies to the strip “is in no way near the scale and speed” required, said Bill O’Keefe, the executive vice president of Catholic Relief Services, who added that the network for food, medical equipment, fuel and other essential material is currently so fragile, a holdup at any point in the chain of transferring aid can lead to huge disruptions.

He described frustration about slow inspections of aid by Israeli officials posted to Egypt, who his organization’s staff report are working normal 9-to-5 hours rather than emergency 24-hour shifts. And he said aid officials have little clarity about what criteria are used to approve trucks for transport into Gaza and how the process of those approvals will come.

Sean Carroll, the president and CEO of the regionally focused aid group ANERA, said the most “damning” sign of the aid operation so far is that, except for during the weeklong pause in fighting, there have never been two consecutive days where the number of trucks permitted into Gaza has increased.

“If that’s not an indication that somebody’s playing politics with humanitarian aid, I don’t know what is,” Carroll said, adding it was clear the capacity for allowing more and more trucks into the territory exists, but government officials involved do not seem willing to ensure that is always the case.

Both Carroll and O’Keefe, and an official at another aid agency who requested anonymity to maintain professional relationships, said they requested meetings with Satterfield ― the U.S. humanitarian envoy ― but had not received a response.

“I think it speaks less to a desire to marginalize humanitarians, and more [to] the very limited mandate of [Satterfield’s] office which is centered on the daily grind of access negotiations” with Israel and Egypt about the southern Gaza border, the official told HuffPost. They expressed concern about what that indicates about the overall Biden administration approach, saying the upshot of the current system is that outside experts are spending time in conversations with influential White House personnel talking about details like the number of trucks let into Gaza, rather than an end to the war.

“It speaks to the overarching dynamic here… people aren’t all pulling in the same direction because there’s not an identified shared interest in appropriate levels of humanitarian access,” the official continued, adding that the U.S., Israel and Egypt were far from an agreement that would truly support Gazans.

O’Keefe described how even aid group staffers attempting to support others in their communities are experiencing the impact of the plummeting conditions.

“Our senior shelter specialist is sleeping with the men of his family on the street, and the women are in a rented room… our staff are professionals, they’re still working and never expected to find themselves homeless themselves,” he told HuffPost. “We have five pregnant or lactating women on our staff who can’t get enough to eat, can’t drink enough to breastfeed ― that’s what’s really taking them to the edge.”

With some nudges from the Biden administration, Israel has recently said it will speed up processing for aid through moves like beginning inspections of aid trucks at another crossing point into Gaza, Kerem Shalom. But humanitarian groups say that step is far from sufficient since many of them believe true progress will only be possible if supplies can actually travel through points other than the Rafah Crossing.

“We sincerely appreciate the efforts of the U.S. government to try to work on many of these issues,” O’Keefe said. But he can’t grasp why logistics for aid remain in question. “It’s hard for us to understand.”