Many Palestinian Americans have been trying — for nearly a year — to evacuate family members out of Gaza. But evacuating loved ones is an opaque process with rapidly changing conditions at the borders.
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Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:55] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to the bay. Local news to keep you rooted. Palestinians around the world have been scrambling to get family out of Gaza since Israel began its siege there, including many Palestinian Americans here in California. But it’s an agonizing process, one that requires lots of money and a whole host of things to go right.
Rolla Alaydi [00:01:25] Death is chasing them. It’s not a game. It’s a life or death. I see my brother’s faces. I see my my nieces and nephews. I’m trying I’m seeking any type of help just to save their lives.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:41] Today, the long, relentless process of getting family out of Gaza.
Nisa Khan [00:02:35] Since the siege of Gaza started, the Palestinian diaspora across the world has was scrambling to help their family members. They’ve been scrambling for options.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:45] Nisa khan is an audience engagement reporter for KQED.
Nisa Khan [00:02:50] Rolla Alaydi is a Pacific Grove resident.
Rolla Alaydi [00:02:52] I am a mom. I am an educator. I was born in a refugee camp in central Gaza called Al-Maghazi Refugee camp.
Nisa Khan [00:03:02] Rolla came to the U.S. as a masters student in Texas and then later moved to California. So she’s been living in America for a long time, and she’s a U.S. citizen.
Rolla Alaydi [00:03:11] Having a shelter and having three meals a day. This is the blessing in the same terms as a curse for me that I am the blessed one here.
Nisa Khan [00:03:22] All of her family is still in Gaza. She’s the eldest daughter, so she’s very protective of her family, always talking to them on WhatsApp. So still very connected to her home in Gaza. In mid-October, she sort of woke up and then suddenly became responsible for all their lives.
Rolla Alaydi [00:03:41] My family, my brothers, my sister in laws, my nephews, my nieces, that they are very young, very vulnerable.
Nisa Khan [00:03:50] Some of the kids are really sick. One of her brothers needs insulin. And as we know, there’s just widespread destruction right now in Gaza. The Israeli armed forces killed over 41,000 Palestinians. Over 94,000 have been injured. And just almost the entire population of Gaza has been displaced. And that includes role Rolla’s family.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:11] Rula is one of many Palestinian Americans who’ve been trying to evacuate family out of Gaza since October 7th. How hard is it, first of all? And he said to even do that.
Nisa Khan [00:04:24] So even before the siege of Gaza, it has always been hard for Palestinians to travel. That’s always been the case. One of the greatest barrier is that they need to be physically on a list, basically to leave Gaza and or Egypt. Even legal experts are not exactly sure who’s in charge of this list to get those Palestinian families name on it. The U.S. State Department will like they have to talk to Egypt, Egypt government say you have to talk to Israel. Israel’s like you have to talk about it to the U.S. A lot of lawyers say like we don’t really know who who who’s in charge of this.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:00] Is there any sort of special visa involved?
Nisa Khan [00:05:04] So there’s a couple of things to keep in mind at this family. Immigration visas, that’s one avenue. But as we all know, like for many different people, the application process just has a long, long backlog. One of the other rules is humanitarian parole, which is when a person outside the United States request to be brought into the country on special humanitarian grounds, such as like a medical emergency. There’s also TPS, Temporary Protected Status. That’s like a designation from like the U.S. government, homeland Security for certain countries. There’s something that’s happening there that it’s dangerous for nationals to return safely to the country. We saw this for Ukraine. We saw this for Haiti during a national disaster and includes things like ongoing armed conflict during the invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. government really kind of jumped to create a program called Uniting for Ukraine. It is a temporary parole program that really helped kind of extend TPS like options to Ukrainians. But one thing is that lawyers who say it’s like we are seeing kind of a double standard because there was not kind of a jump to help Palestinians in the same situation.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:11] One obvious probably element of this is the money it takes to get someone out of Gaza. Right. Can you talk a little bit about that and how much it I mean, how much does it cost to get someone out of Gaza?
Nisa Khan [00:06:24] So how I even got to know about Rolla is that I saw that she had a go fund me, though, circling around a lot of like San Francisco Bay Area Instagram pages. There’s a lot of money needed housing, food, medical care. The filing fees, there is travel. This permits. We’ve been hearing a lot of reports, even in NPR, that a lot of families are being asked for for bribes by a lot of Egyptian officials. It could be as high as $10,000 per adult and like $5,000 per child. It does take a lot of money and people have really large families.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:59] I know Rolla is very familiar with this process and just how hard it is to get family out of Gaza. And I know that in April, her brothers were actually approved to leave Gaza. They got on this list that you’re talking about to cross the Egyptian border. What happened?
Nisa Khan [00:07:18] It was late April when Rolla found out that her brothers were on the list and they’re approved to leave Gaza on May 20th.
Rolla Alaydi [00:07:29] I went on April the 28th. I took with me vitamins. Medicine. Medicine for epilepsy. For my niece.
Nisa Khan [00:07:38] She’s going to be seeing some of her nieces and nephews for the first time. I actually could not wait to see them for the first time and hug them.
Rolla Alaydi [00:07:44] I was so excited. So I kept counting the days and the hours. The first thing I was thinking, okay, I’m going to buy them a lot of food. So took like six hours to work and learned that it’s my turn to sign them. And after I signed, it was me waiting for them. They were scheduled to leave on May 28th, and then the Rafah border was shut down.
Nisa Khan [00:08:10] Israel began its military offensive in Rafah in on May 6th, and the Egyptian border was closed. Then she had to go back to America because she just wasn’t able to get them.
Rolla Alaydi [00:08:22] I was so close to see them and like them and. And I was just kind of impossible even just to wish to see them. With all Gaza being besieged and the borders shut down. Nothing in, nothing out.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:39] I mean, that’s awful Nisa. I mean, like, she’s already been through so much in the last couple of months. And then to sort of have that sense of hope and excitement and then just to have the door closed on your face, I mean, how do you deal with that?
Nisa Khan [00:08:54] I think it’s just a struggle every day. She says like she’s really trying to hold it together. She says she doesn’t want to break down crying in front of her son. She’s really trying to hold together. It is. It’s awful.
Rolla Alaydi [00:09:06] Twice I went to the hospital since October the seven, and I’m trying to tell myself, I don’t want to be weak. I want to be sick. I need to knock every single door, go through any process that I have to just to save them.
Nisa Khan [00:09:24] Her like form of like release this out every Sunday in Monterey County. She goes to near the beach and she sits at this table and she basically has like a tabling where she just talks about Palestinian culture.
Rolla Alaydi [00:09:37] We have like kind of an educational table. So I shared the Arabic coffee. I share one meal of Palestinian cuisine. I have my book there. I have some like Palestinian item, you know.
Nisa Khan [00:09:52] Slowly like people in the community in Monterey has just been sort of coming up to her and they started showing up every week. She has made friends for a lot of people, a lot of people who have faced similar things.
Rolla Alaydi [00:10:02] They talk to me, they hear my voice. I talk about my family. They see their pictures. I share with them the videos. So it’s a small community, but I feel the the support.
Nisa Khan [00:10:19] When I went in June, like this entire group called Veterans for Peace showed up. But the big reason why they showed up is that a group of like kind of counter-protesters started showing up supportive of the former President Trump. They were having these huge like Make America Great Again signs yelling at the pro-Palestinian protesters, getting into like debates about it. I think one thing about roles, as she spent a lot of time, kind of like refusing to get into debates.
Rolla Alaydi [00:10:47] Once in a while, I’d be like, you know, having someone who would disagree with me on such token politics is like, I’m not in a position to discuss with you a political issues or anything. I have a family that they need me the most and I’m trying to save them.
Nisa Khan [00:11:04] She tries to like, you know, defuse tensions between the Trump supporters and the pro-Palestinian push us just by just offering everyone watermelon coffee. Like, she’s just like, I’m not getting sucked into anything. Like I’m here to talk about my family. But I do think Sunday kind of like rejuvenates her in a way. She feels kind of like the love from like, the new friends that she has made, the new people that she’s able to talk to in the middle of the night and just talk to her about her feelings. She does say like it gives her a boost of energy. I think those Sundays are really important to her.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:32] Yeah. And I mean, she’s again, one of many Palestinian Americans here who are trying to raise money and get support from their community to get their family out of Gaza. Do you get the sense that they feel supported by their neighbors and community members?
Nisa Khan [00:11:50] I’m sure they’re feeling support from people who are really showing up.
Lamea Abuelrous [00:11:54] I still feel hopes. I still feel like, you know, there is a people around this world. They have good heart.
Nisa Khan [00:12:01] Another person has a very similar story to Rolla is Lamea Abuelrous. She is a cafe owner at Temo’s Cafe here in San Francisco.
Lakshmi Sarah [00:12:09] Why did you end up in.
Lamea Abuelrous [00:12:11] The Bay Area? How did you. Marriage? Yes, my husband brought me here. Okay.
Nisa Khan [00:12:16] She was born in Gaza City and but came to the United States in 1992 and started running the cafe in the mission since 2014. It’s this really beautiful place. Rustic vibe, Pink walls. It is a really cute cafe. I like the chai there. And the big thing that capture the attention is like this pink wall. And on it is a quote from a Palestinian poet that says, Without hope, we are lost. She basically is the eldest daughter in her family, too, like Rula. And she has so many family members, including her father, who are stuck in Gaza.
Lamea Abuelrous [00:12:51] The minute I talk to my dad, I could feel his arm and hear his voice, how exhausted. And he said, you know, we don’t know how long we’re going to stay alive, how long we’re going to survive because situation every single day got worse and worse than before. It’s not a good feeling.
Nisa Khan [00:13:13] When she first started her go fund me to support her family in the first month, she only got like $350. It was not a lot of money. She was alone. She didn’t know what to do. And then people from the community started stepping up. There’s a local organization called The Ruby is for Women and the nonbinary people, kind of a creative working space. They held this event where like kind of like over 100 people showed up. They’re musicians. There is performance kind of ways to like, again, support her family and support her go fund me, basically. When you stop by her cafe, people are stopping by and they’re always asking, like, I heard about you on Mission Local local news. I heard you from Instagram and stuff like that.
Lamea Abuelrous [00:13:51] An old man, he walk into my shop and he said, Are you the owner of Temo’s cafe? I said, Yes. How can I help you? And he was like, and I read about, you know, you have family in Gaza. You know, I’m not that rich. But what I could offer for you now is just the $20 I have. I was like, my God, I feel I didn’t know what the feeling I have that moment. I just want to give him a hug. Said, I wish I could help more. And this is something. Show you the good heart and humanity.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:14:28] Yeah, I mean, it sounds like there’s a lot of emotional support that is needed and that in some ways this material support, like folks showing up, folks donating to the Go fund me, is a form of emotional support because it shows that people care about what’s what’s going on.
Nisa Khan [00:14:48] Having a community support is so important, but having action from media or top officials is just something that’s really, really needed. She’s smiling and she’s talking. She’s running her business. She’s working like every single day. She’s like, my mind is still in Gaza.
Lamea Abuelrous [00:15:06] It’s so painful. The feeling I have all the time, it makes me feel like, you know, life is too short, even even for us here. Like, you know, hearing bad news about your loved one, it’s. My God.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:15:26] Any updates on the status of Rolla’s family’s evacuation now, or Lamea’s?
Nisa Khan [00:15:34] Unfortunately not. Rolla is constantly posting on Instagram, showing pictures of her nieces and nephews, just trying to really, like show them that they have dreams, they have a life, and they just want people to know, remember who they are.
Rolla Alaydi [00:15:49] It’s hard when we sure wouldn’t be sure to share, like happy pictures and happy faces. And we said we want people to remember us as the beautiful faces. So don’t show like, you know, misery or suffering. The people remember us by name, so they don’t even want me to say like, my brother. They say, is this is Alma? This is Amina Salim going in school. They want people to remember them as a human with names and stories.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:16:23] Well, Nisa, thank you so much for joining us on the show. I appreciate it.
Nisa Khan [00:16:27] Yeah, Thank you so much for having me.