(NewsNation) — The Biden administration said Tuesday it’s doing everything it can to help evacuate several American doctors who are stuck in Gaza amid a total military siege by Israel of the Rafah crossing, with some trapped saying they are witnessing a “complete eradication of everything.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday the White House is monitoring the situation involving the trapped U.S. medical workers.
“We’re tracking this matter closely and working to get the impacted American citizens out of Gaza,” she said. Jean-Pierre added that the administration is “engaging directly with the government of Israel to make that happen.”
More than a dozen American doctors, nurses, and other health care workers went to Gaza May 1 as part of a medical mission at the European Hospital with the Palestinian American Medical Association.
The group was scheduled to leave Rafah on Monday so another mission could take over the aid work but have since been told there is no longer a safe route to exit the besieged strip after Israeli troops seized control of Gaza’s Rafah border crossing last week.
Dr. Adam Hamawy, a New Jersey-based plastic surgeon, is part of the medical mission still in Gaza. He told NewsNation Wednesday that they still have not received an official update on evacuating.
Hamaway said the situation unfolding in Gaza is more horrific than any war he’s ever witnessed.
“The extent of damage is beyond anything that I’ve seen before,” he said.
The attacks launched on the Palestinian population are not “surgical strikes,” Hamawy said, adding that entire neighborhoods are being wiped out at a time.
“This is not a war. This is such a complete eradication of everything,” he said.
In a statement to NewsNation, the Israel Defense Forces said “there is no IDF doctrine that aims causing maximal damage to civilian infrastructure regardless of military necessity. IDF actions are based on military necessity and with accordance to international law.”
The majority of the people Hamawy is treating are young children.
“Just a couple hours ago, I got two children, ages 1 and 3 years old, who were burned in an explosion, so this is more than half my patients. The other consists of women, elderly,” he said.
Several doctors, including Hamawy, have described “horrific” conditions inside the European Hospital, where there are mass shortages of medical supplies and staff as well as abhorrent sanitary conditions attracting flies and other insects.
Hamawy’s group has another medical envoy waiting in Egypt on standby to take their place once they can safely exit, but he worries they will be denied entry by Israel.
“We’re worried about what happens if we leave and no one is here to replace us, so that’s something that we’re trying to come to terms with as well,” he said. “We hope that it’s a two-way exchange and that aid continues to come and hopefully on a larger scale than what we were able to provide.”
If the envoy is denied, it would force members of his group to decide to leave or stay, he said.
“That would be a very hard decision that I hope we don’t have to make,” he said.
Hamawy was an Army surgeon assigned to a combat support hospital in Iraq in 2004 and treated Sen. Tammy Duckworth — who was an Army helicopter pilot at the time — after her Black Hawk helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. She lost her legs and partial use of her arms in the attack.
Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, credits him for saving her life.
On Tuesday, Duckworth posted on X that she is in direct contact with Hamawy and is “working hard to secure his group’s immediate evacuation.”
Duckworth called on Israeli leaders to immediately open the Rafah border in Gaza.
Earlier this week, a State Department spokesperson told NewsNation it’s aware of U.S. citizen doctors unable to leave Gaza, adding the U.S. government has no control over the border crossing or who is permitted to depart Gaza.
The Rafah crossing into Egypt has been closed since Israeli troops seized it a week ago. Israel gained full control over the entry and exit of people and goods for the first time since it withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, though it has long maintained a blockade of the coastal enclave in cooperation with Egypt.
No food has reportedly entered the two main border crossings in southern Gaza for the past week, the New York Times reported. It is a region that had been sheltering 1.3 million Palestinians, many of whom have fled since Israel took control of the crossing.
The exodus of Palestinians from Gaza’s last refuge accelerated Sunday as Israeli forces pushed deeper into the southern city of Rafah.
Some 300,000 of the more than 1 million civilians sheltering there had fled the city by Monday following evacuation orders from Israel, which said it must invade to dismantle Hamas and return hostages taken from Israel in the Oct. 7 attack.