Children sat on suitcases as hundreds of Palestinian Americans gathered by the Rafah border crossing to Egypt with hopes they could flee Gaza to safety.
But the crossing remained closed Monday, despite promises from U.S. State Department officials, leaving many Palestinian Americans frustrated but “not surprised.”
“We are surviving on sandwiches,” said Maha Barakat, an American citizen desperate to cross the border into Egypt. She is one of 600 Americans still stuck in Gaza, according to the State Department’s tally.
“We are American citizens and should be treated the same as the Americans who got put on planes out of Tel Aviv,” she said in a telephone interview with NBC News Monday, now in her seventh day of waiting to cross since she moved her nieces and nephews to a family friends’ house in southern Gaza. Her own children live in New Jersey and are in college.
“It’s getting dark, it’s already getting loud. We’ve heard a few bombings in the area. We’re not going to have electricity for the rest of the night,” she told NBC News in a separate message.
Emilee Rauschenberger, who was in Khan Yunis with her Palestinian husband and five children visiting family, said they lined up at the crossing for at least 10 hours before having to return to Khan Yunis. This wasn’t the family’s first time trying to cross the border.
“People are again, just waiting around frustrated and exhausted,” Rauschenberger said of the scene at Rafah crossing, adding that some people have been there for days on end, even sleeping by it, in hopes of it opening.
Crowds of people could be seen standing and sitting by the crossing surrounded by luggage. On the crossing gates was a sign that read “Danger the crossing is threatened by bombing.”
“We are human beings, we are not human animals,” said Adil Salem, who is trying to cross Rafah to get back home to Missouri. “There is no safe haven in Gaza, there is no safe road in Gaza, there is no humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. There is nothing, there’s nothing but bombs and bombs and bombs, and blood and bodies,” he said.
The State Department continues to advise Americans inside Gaza to go to the crossing if it’s safe to do so. “There may be very little notice if the crossing opens, and it may only open for a limited time,” according to communications sent via texts and emails from the State Department that were shared with NBC News.
The U.S. does not have officials at the border crossing, according to a senior State Department official. “So the situation is we have been trying. The Egyptians have told us there are acute security threats there that prevent it,” the official said.
Egypt has remained steadfast in its reluctance to fully open the border, which sustained physical damage from Israeli airstrikes on Monday as well as last week. Israel shelled the area in front of the Rafah crossing, essentially cutting off the roads, according to local media reports.
Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry said during remarks on Monday that the country has been seeking to open the Rafah crossing since the start of the conflict, and the Israeli government’s position hasn’t been conducive to its opening.
“Until now, unfortunately, the Israeli government has not taken a position that would lead to the possibility of opening the crossing from the Gaza side to allow the entry of aid or the exit of citizens from other countries,” Shoukry said.
Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to President Biden, on Sunday told NBC's "Meet the Press" that his priority is to have “safe places that civilians can go that will not be subject to bombardments” and that he is working with the U.N., Israel, Egypt and Jordan to try to ensure that. He acknowledged that no American citizens have been able to cross.
More than 2,800 people have been killed in Gaza and 10,859 have been injured in the violence following the unprecedented Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that targeted civilians, including women and children in kibbutzim and at a music festival. In Israel, 1,400 people have been killed and 3,900 have been wounded. The toll of American deaths from Hamas’ attack on Israel and the subsequent war stands at 30, a State Department spokesperson said Sunday.
Helal Kaoud, a Palestinian American who along with other members of her family has been desperately trying to get their five U.S. citizen fathers — all brothers — out of Gaza, said her father waited in line but no one was there to help. The destruction from Israeli bombing near the crossing has left him skeptical that Rafah will open any time soon.
“He said that there’s trenches from the bombs on either side and that it would be impossible to drive or even walk over there,” Kaoud told NBC News. “He said they’d have to fill those up for anything to go in or out and that’ll probably take days and now he thinks they’re just messing with people telling them it’s open.”
Her brother, Amir, who was also at the border hoping to cross, said it feels like the government isn’t helping Americans in Gaza. Last night, he said, he was trying to sleep when a bomb made impact near where he was staying, close to Khan Yunis.
“America’s not helping us, Biden’s not helping us, the embassy is not helping us,” Amir said, adding that it was his second time at the Rafah crossing. “They keep saying the same thing every day, they’re trying to figure out a way to get us out. Nothing’s happening. All the people, all the U.S. citizens in Israel, they’re getting out. Why not us?”
Mai Abushaaban, whose mother and sister are currently trapped in Gaza, said she was not surprised that the border crossing remained closed and is frustrated at the false hopes given out by the U.S. government. “Most people were skeptical,” she said, adding that she was “surprised by the lack of guidance and support from the State Department.”
Palestinian American frustrations come as the humanitarian situation in Gaza has become bleak amid the constant bombing. On Monday, a United Nations food aid warehouse and distribution center in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood in southern Gaza City was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.
Israel, in an effort to pressure Hamas into releasing the hostages, is not allowing the aid trucks to cross until the hostages are released.
“We just want the bombing to stop and then we can worry about humanitarian aid,” said Jason Shawa, who was born in Seattle to a Palestinian father and an American mother and is currently trapped in Gaza with his two daughters.
“Honestly I can’t even imagine any humanitarian agency that can really function on the ground with the conditions like we have at the moment,” he added.
Shawa, who is staying in a small cabin packed with 50 relatives and neighbors in Central Gaza, said they almost ran out of drinking water yesterday. He said they were considering getting buckets of seawater to use in the toilets amid the dire water shortage, but it would be a 6-mile “unsafe” walk to the beach and the amount of water needed would be impossible to shoulder in one trip.
For now, Palestinian Americans stuck in Gaza are hoping they can leave soon.
“If we stay here, we might run out of food, we might run out of water, we might get hit, we don’t know,” Amir said. “We’re worried, we’re trying to leave.”
