Washington Post: U.S. failed to evacuate Palestinian Americans from Gaza, lawsuit alleges
A new lawsuit has accused the U.S. government of failing to rescue Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza after the war with Israel began in late 2023.
The complaint accused President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin of depriving U.S. citizens, permanent residents and their immediate relatives “of the normal and typical evacuation efforts the federal government extends to Americans who are not Palestinians.” It was filed Thursday and announced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
The suit is the second filed this week against the U.S. government over the war in Gaza. The other, filed Tuesday in Washington, accused Blinken of deliberately circumventing U.S. human rights law by providing military aid to Israel amid the war.
Eight of the nine plaintiffs in Thursday’s case are U.S. citizens; the ninth is a permanent resident. All are either trapped in Gaza themselves or have immediate relatives still in the besieged enclave. They include an American mother stranded in Gaza with her three children, ages 7, 12 and 15, and a U.S. man suffering from untreated hepatitis A.
The lawsuit noted that U.S. citizens and their families were evacuated in other circumstances — including from Israel following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and from Afghanistan after the Taliban returned to power in 2021. It said the United States has managed to arrange some evacuations from Gaza since the war began.
But while some of the plaintiffs received U.S. government approval to leave Gaza, their names did not appear on an online list of those allowed to depart before the Israeli closure of the Rafah crossing in May, the lawsuit said. Others did not gain State Department approval, or did not want to leave without immediate relatives who had not been granted permission to travel, the lawsuit added.
Since the Rafah closure, the State Department has facilitated or coordinated the departure of American doctors and sick and injured Palestinian children via the Kerem Shalom crossing, but the United States has not evacuated Palestinian Americans and their immediate relatives through this route, the lawsuit said.
In a briefing Thursday, State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel declined to comment on pending litigation but said the safety and security of American citizens around the world is a “top priority.”