‘We are scared’: US citizens still stuck in Gaza after Biden visit to Israel

President Biden has helped negotiate aid deal into Gaza, but hasn’t gotten Americans out

When Joe Biden visited Israel on Wednesday, he had a message for its people: You are not alone.

“As long as the United States stands – and we will stand forever – we will not ever let you be alone,” the president said from Tel Aviv.

Sixty-two miles away in southern Gaza, hundreds of US citizens stranded near Rafah border crossing couldn’t have felt more forgotten.

Despite nearly two weeks of fighting, intensive negotiations between the US and its partners, and apocalyptic humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territory, an estimated 500 to 600 Americans are still trapped in the 88-square-mile enclave, one of the most densely settled places in the world.

Making matters worse, they say, are dangerous mixed messages from the US State Department.

Massachusetts family Abood Okal, Wafaa Abuzayda, and their 1-year-old son Yousef were in Gaza visiting family when the war broke out. They’ve been told three separate times that the Rafah crossing is open, only to find that’s not the case, their lawyer, Boston-based attorney Sammy Nabulsi, told The Independent.

Massachusetts father Abood Okal, his wife Wafaa Abuzayda, and their one-year-old son Yousef are waiting near the Egypt border with Gaza for safe passage (And then? “And if there are American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out.”)

Most recently, he said, a State Department foreign affairs officer reached out to the family after the president’s speech, telling them, “The border should be open today.”

As the day wore on, and Mr Biden touted an agreement to allow about 20 aid trucks into Gaza from Egypt and promised more military aid to Israel, the family still didn’t get any news.

The Independent has contacted the State Department and White House for comment.

Time is of the absolute essence, as military strikes continue to hit the area around Rafah. Israel has bombed the border area already during the war. There’s a non-zero chance a major US ally could harm or kill a US citizen, days after a presidential visit.

On Thursday morning, Mr Nabulsi said, a massive explosion rattled the Rafah home where Mr Okal, Ms Abuzayda, and Yousef are staying. The blast cracked the walls and terrified the “inconsolable” 1-year-old.

An explosion hits the Rafah border area of Gaza on 19 October, 2023 (Courtesy of Sammy Nabulsi)

“I cannot wrap my head around the President going all the way to Israel, developing an agreement for humanitarian aid, and pledging up to an additional $40 billion of aid for this war, without having done anything to get American citizens home safely, first,” Mr Nabulsi told The Independent.

“This family is going to die if we do not get them out,” he added.

Another Palestinian-American family stuck in Gaza, the Alarayshis, described a similar predicament.

Laila and Zacharia Alarayshi, who live in Livonia, Michigan, were trapped in Gaza by the war while visiting family. A lawsuit over the US government’s handling of the evacuation quotes from a message Mr Alarayshi sent to civil rights groups, describing the peril of attempting the journey to Rafah under current conditions.

“People left for evacuation and they were killed on the streets and by air,” he said last week. “Some made it back alive and they are hiding inside now. The situation is getting worse.”

“They just hit the house next to us,” he added in the message. “We are scared. We can’t go to the bathroom; we can’t go anywhere. We don’t have electricity, we’re without water, there’s nothing.”

Aid deliveries into Gaza could begin as soon as Friday, but it’s still unclear when families like the Alarayshis will be able to leave. That’s left Palestinian-Americans in the US and Gaza feeling like they’ve been left behind, even as Israeli-Americans have been evacuated to Europe on charter flights and a luxury ocean liner.

“Unfortunately, from what I’ve been seeing, especially from our federal administration, our Palestinian lives, our Palestinian-American lives, matter less than Israeli-American lives,” Rania Mustafa, executive director of the New Jersey-based Palestinian American Community Center, told The Independent earlier this week. “I would dare saying Palestinian-American lives matter less than even an Israeli life [to the US government.]”

Neither Mr Biden’s Tel Aviv speech, nor his remarks during a meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, made mention of the hundreds of Americans in Gaza.

A petition calling on the US to do more to secure the release of Americans in Gaza has over 12,000 signatures.

The situation in Gaza is not the first time the Biden administration has been accused of leaving Americans behind in a combat zone.

During the 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the administration broke a promise not to pull troops out of the country until American citizens who wished to leave had been taken to safety.

Two years later, an unknown number of Americans remain in Afghanistan, some detained by the Taliban, alongside thousands of Afghan allies eligible for resettlement, ABC News reports.

Mr Biden is expected to address Americans in an Oval Office speech on Thursday evening.