Palestinian Americans File Lawsuit Against US for “Abandoning” Them in Gaza

A group of Palestinian Americans is suing the U.S. government for failing to evacuate American citizens and legal residents stranded in Gaza amid Israel’s genocide, saying that the U.S. is violating constitutional protections afforded to all Americans by discriminating against Palestinians and leaving them stranded.

The group of nine Palestinian Americans, either themselves stuck in Gaza or whose family are stranded there, accuse the government of violating the Fifth Amendment, promising equal protection, “by depriving Plaintiffs of the normal and typical evacuation efforts the federal government extends to Americans who are not Palestinians,” the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs were in Gaza before the U.S. issued a travel advisory against going to Gaza on October 11, 2023, the lawsuit says, and were thus trapped as the White House said that the government had no plans for Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza — despite having arranged charter flights for Israeli Americans to flee Israel shortly after the October 7, 2023, attack.

The U.S.’s evacuation of people from other countries or of other nationalities from war zones but not of Palestinians is evidence of a “discriminatory two-tier system” employed by the government against people of Palestinian origin, the lawsuit says.

All of the plaintiffs are people who are eligible for evacuation but whose requests to leave have been swept under the rug by the Biden administration, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is supporting the lawsuit. Each of them have “tried for months to exhaust non-legal means to escape Gaza,” including with other previous legal actions.

CAIR says that the State Department has blamed Israel’s closure of the Rafah crossing — which happened in May after Israeli forces violated President Joe Biden’s supposed “red line” — but say that the lawsuit requests evacuation through Kerem Shalom, which has been the site of other evacuations, and which remains open.

“The law requires the U.S. government to protect Americans wherever they may be. With every passing day, the danger of our clients dying from Israeli bombardment or the starvation and disease now rampant in Gaza only goes up,” Maria Kari, the case’s lead attorney, said in a statement. “The State Department must do the right thing and save these people from certain death.”

The plaintiffs’ stories are horrific. They include that of the Khalid Mourtaga, from Mississippi, who is trapped in Gaza with untreated Hepatitis A; Sahar Harara, of Texas, whose father was killed by Israel and whose mother, a green card holder, is critically injured; Marowa Abusharia, who lives in New Jersey, whose spouse, stuck in north Gaza, hasn’t met their twin daughters who were born shortly after the genocide began; and Heba Enayeh, whose 17-year-old son, Abdallah, is trapped in Gaza and in need of urgent medical care.

One of the plaintiffs, Salsabeel ElHelou, is hoping for evacuation for her and her three sons, who are 7, 12 and 15 years old. In March, three of their names appeared on the evacuation list — but not that of Almotasem, the eldest. Months later, Almotasem was hit and wounded in an Israeli airstrike, and all of the children now have skin conditions and suffer from malnutrition.

“Defendants have full knowledge of the desperate condition of the Plaintiffs and yet have failed to fulfill their mandatory, non-discretionary duty to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza just like the federal government has evacuated other United States persons of other nationalities,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit is the second filed against the U.S. government this week by Palestinian Americans after a group of five Palestinians sued aiming to stop the U.S.’s weapons transfers to Israel, saying that the U.S. is violating the Leahy Law by continuing to aid Israel’s assault.

The U.S. has consistently shown total indifference toward the lives of Americans if their existence is a supposed affront to Israelis. This week, the State Department implied to members of Congress that they are not independently investigating Israel’s killing of Turkish American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, and are instead relying solely on Israel’s word — despite Israel having a long history of lying to exonerate itself.