Bay Area woman trapped in Gaza sues U.S. officials
An 81-year-old Daly City grandmother is suing the U.S. secretaries of state and defense, claiming they are violating the U.S. Constitution by not evacuating Palestinian Americans from besieged Gaza.
A relative of the woman, Dina Bseiso, a Bay Area resident, said her family is disappointed that the U.S. government “has left one of our own family members stranded” despite her U.S. citizenship. “When we are lucky enough to get her on the phone, she tells us how scared she is that by the time she is evacuated, it'll be too late for her.”
The woman tried to cross into Egypt from Gaza in recent weeks, but Egyptian authorities turned her away, according to the lawsuit. This news organization is not naming the woman over concerns by her family and lawyers that she could be targeted by Israel's military.
According to the lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, the woman “is currently trapped abroad in the Gaza Strip in an active war zone … under imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.”
Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union, has controlled Gaza since 2007. Hamas attacked Israel early last month, killing more than 1,400 people and taking some 200 hostages, according to Israeli authorities. Israel responded with an ongoing bombardment and in recent days a ground invasion that Palestinian authorities say have killed more than 8,000 people.
The Daly City woman “has lost any effective means of regular communication with the outside world,” according to the lawsuit filed by a San Francisco law firm.
She had traveled in August to Gaza with her son to visit her childhood home and has received clearance to cross into Egypt at Rafah but is too “medically fragile” to make the trip alone, and she cannot get permission for her son, who is not a U.S. citizen, to enter Egypt, her lawyer Ghassan Shamieh said. “The family doesn't know how she's going to cross because they're afraid if she goes by herself that she won't make it,” Shamieh said.
The woman has been moving between buildings to try to keep safe and as of Wednesday was about 8 miles from the Rafah border crossing, Shamieh said.
The lawsuit, one of several similar actions filed across the U.S., charged that Secretary of State Antony Blinken failed to issue a “non-combatant evacuation order” to extricate Palestinian Americans from Gaza, despite the typical practice to evacuate U.S. citizens and their families from war zones. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, responsible for working with Blinken on evacuations, has not done so for Palestinian Americans, and both officials have violated the woman's Constitutional right to equal protection under the Fifth Amendment, the lawsuit stated
The lawsuit noted that the State Department last month warned U.S. citizens not to travel to Gaza because of terrorism, civil unrest and armed conflict. But, the lawsuit said U.S. citizens, including the plaintiff, were already there.
“The Gaza Strip is surrounded by an ongoing naval blockade making escape by sea impossible. Borders to Egypt and Israel have been closed. Active fighting is ongoing and blocking routes from population centers to those border crossings,” the lawsuit noted.
The U.S. could condition ongoing foreign aid to Israel on that country allowing U.S. citizens in Gaza to escape via Israel or by boat, the lawsuit contended. The lawsuit also claimed the U.S. could use its influence in Egypt to help its citizens flee through the EgyptianIsraeli border.
U.S. National Security advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that American officials were working to get U.S. citizens out of Gaza.
“The Egyptians are prepared to allow American citizens and foreign nationals to come through the Rafah gate into Egypt,” Sullivan said. “Hamas has been preventing their departure and making a series of demands.”
Sullivan said he could not publicly discuss the purported demands by Hamas.
UC Berkeley political science professor Ron Hassner said the reported obstruction by Hamas of U.S. citizens seeking to leave Gaza appears to be “intended to coerce the U.S. into slowing down Israel's dismantling Hamas.”
The State Department said Thursday that it generally does not comment on lawsuits but said getting the Rafah border crossing from Gaza into Egypt open for U.S. citizens to leave Gaza has been a top priority and they were among foreign nationals who left Gaza via Rafah on Wednesday. The department said it expected departures to continue and it would work to ensure U.S. citizens and their families get out as safely as possible amid a complicated situation. The Defense Department said it does not discuss ongoing lawsuits.
The lawsuit refers to 10 prior conflicts that saw the U.S. use military forces to evacuate its citizens. The final reference is to Afghanistan in 2021 when the U.S. government evacuated thousands of U.S. citizens, including Afghan Americans, amid a military withdrawal. That operation went awry with a suicide attack on U.S. forces that killed 13 personnel and 170 Afghan civilians and led to fierce Republican condemnation of President Biden's exit from the Afghanistan war.
Getting to border crossings to flee Gaza is hampered by active fighting, the lawsuit said. “U.S. citizens like the … plaintiff will be subject to assault, attack, bombardment, dismemberment, and death if they attempt to escape through any route out of population centers,” according to the lawsuit.