American doctors say they cannot evacuate Gaza amid Israeli siege

(NewsNation) — Two American doctors who volunteered to provide medical care in Gaza say they were stuck in the enclave without safe passage Monday following Israel’s seizure of the Rafah border. 

Dr. Mohamad Abdelfattah, from Southern California, and Dallas-based Dr. Mahmoud Sabha say they went to Gaza on May 1 as part of a medical mission at the European Hospital with the Palestinian American Medical Association. 

Both were scheduled to leave Rafah 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. They were both sheltering at the hospital Monday evening as they waited for a way out.

“Since the Rafah invasion, the crossings and the route to cross have not been safe from what we were told, and so they [the organization] are working on coordinating a safe exit for us. That’s all that we know,” Abdelfattah told NewsNation via a phone interview Monday.

Abdelfattah, an intensive care unit doctor, said there were potentially 20 to 30 more Americans along with them at the European Hospital who were also unable to evacuate.  

“We’re all waiting to get more concrete information,” Sabha told NewsNation, adding he was hopeful they would get word of an exit route within the next 24 to 48 hours. The medical organization had a team waiting on the other side in Egypt, he said, and he hoped they could come in once his team was allowed to leave.

A State Department spokesperson told NewsNation it is aware of reports 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 Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not return a request for comment by NewsNation on the American doctors unable to evacuate from Rafah.

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, a region that had been sheltering 1.3 million Palestinians, many of whom have fled since Israel took control of the crossing.

Americans have been warned not to travel to Gaza and to reconsider going to Israel and the West Bank “due to terrorism and civil unrest,” according to a travel advisory from the State Department last month.

Foreign doctors viewed as protection for the people in Rafah 

As the Palestinian American Medical Association works with the World Health Organization to coordinate safe passage for the medical team, Gazans sheltering at the hospital worry that the Americans’ departure could leave them more vulnerable, the doctors told NewsNation. 

“The people here see us potentially as protection for them because they believe that while we’re (foreign nationals are) here, the Israelis will not attack the hospital,” Abdelfattah said.

“The people here think there won’t be a large-scale attack on the hospital, but no one can ever know,” he said.

According to Abdelfattah, the belief that the hospital was safe is a “false sense of security,” referring to a UN staff member who was killed when, the agency reported, a UN vehicle was struck on its way to the European Hospital Monday.

Not only was he hoping to be able to leave Gaza, Abdelfattah worried about what would happen with medical care in an already stretched hospital if the next medical envoy was denied entry. 

“I fear for what’s to come if we leave and no one is here,” he said. 

Conditions in Rafah medical hospital are ‘horrific’ 

Both doctors say they have seen conditions get worse each day, with little to no supplies left to treat patients, many of whom are children.

Sabha, a wound care physician, said while working at the European Hospital, he had to deal with medical emergencies he’d never seen before.

“You’re used to seeing patients improve the more you work with them, but here, they just deteriorate,” he said. “You see wounds with broken bones underneath and mangled tissues…the wounds are different and more horrific and severe over here just due to the mechanism of injuries.”

Sabha said the sanitary conditions were abhorrent, with flies, mosquitoes and other insects constantly in the operating room and wound care areas in the intensive care unit.

He said the medical supplies Sabha had with him when he arrived in Gaza two weeks prior were all he had left. 

Abdelfattah described the hospital as a “chaotic scene,” with a staff that was overworked and exhausted. 

After Israel’s siege on Rafah, local medical workers have had difficulty getting to the hospital because of road blockages, and many were focused on protecting their families, he said.

In the last few days, a bus that normally brought about 50 workers to the hospital showed up with only five.

“It’s just horrific overall, and it’s just very disheartening to know that this is a man-made disaster and intentional disaster that really did not need to happen at all,” Abdelfattah said.

‘This was never about us’

Abdelfattah’s wife and two young kids back in California are worried for his safety amid the violence, but he said he told them he was there for something much bigger than himself. 

“I keep reminding them and trying to remind myself that this was never about us,” he said of himself and his medical colleagues.

For the aid team, it was an “inconvenience” to wait for an evacuation, he said, but “for the people of Gaza who have been trapped and have been suffering, they have far greater tests and tribulations than us.”

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. 

The U.N. warned of a potential collapse of the flow of aid to Palestinians from the closure of the Rafah crossing from Egypt and the other main crossing into Gaza, and U.N. officials say northern Gaza is experiencing “full-blown famine.”

Sabha, who also has a wife and two young children back home in Texas, said he kept focus on the conditions the people in Gaza endured for months.  

“They will never have the life they had before, and that’s a sad reality,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.