Washington DC – “Receipt confirmed.” This is the only message Yasmeen Elagha received from the US government after two of her cousins – both Palestinian Americans – were arrested by Israeli forces while sheltering near Khan Younis in the south from Gaza.
She is now calling on the administration of US President Joe Biden to do more to ensure their safety and secure their release. Elagha said his two cousins, Borak Alagha, 18, and Hashem Alagha, 20, were being held without charge.
“We pleaded with the U.S. government,” said Elagha, a law student at Northwestern University in Chicago. “The administration is completely failing in its duty.”
His family is one of many advocating for the protection of Palestinian Americans detained by Israel as the war on Gaza drags on. They gathered Monday in Washington, D.C., for a press conference to press for action.
From the podium, Elagha explained that she learned of her cousins’ kidnapping during a February 7 phone call with her aunt in Gaza. In tears, her aunt recounted how Israeli soldiers broke into their shelter in al-Mowasi, near Khan Younis, and tied up the women and children.
The men experienced a different fate. Elagha’s aunt described how the two cousins, along with their father, uncle and two other male relatives, were all taken away. The soldiers left the shelter ransacked and the tires of the family car were slashed, according to Elagha’s aunt. Since then, none of the men have heard from them.
Since then, Elagha has sent a flurry of emails to the US embassies in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Cairo, as well as to a US task force on Gaza. She received only one response confirming that her call had been received.
The wait for information has been excruciating, she said. “Minutes feel like hours, so it feels like it’s already been a month since they left.”
Allegations of trumped-up charges
Suliman Hamed, a Louisiana resident, shared a similar experience at the event hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
He said his Palestinian-American mother, Samaher Esmail, 46, was taken into Israeli custody in the occupied West Bank last Monday and that he had not been able to speak to her since.
He said he received only one call from an embassy official following his detention. Days have passed, but consular staff have still not visited her where she is being held at Damon Prison in Haifa, Hamed said.
“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and now Monday again. No one from the US embassy visited or spoke with my mother, a US citizen,” he said.
While she waits in prison, Hamed worries about her mother’s health. Her lawyer told her she had not received her medication since her arrest.
“It’s been seven days and she still hasn’t received a single medicine. This led to a considerable worsening of his condition,” Hamad said. “We have repeatedly asked the American Embassy to send a consular officer to my mother, so that we can get an update on her condition.”
His mother was arrested on allegations of “social media incitement,” he said. Hamed and her brother Ibrahim fear she was targeted in retaliation for a lawsuit she filed against the Israeli military, after she was allegedly beaten during a traffic stop in 2022.
Rights groups have long accused Israeli authorities of using false accusations of “incitement” to repress Palestinians and suppress free speech.
But arrests in the occupied West Bank have increased overall since the war began on October 7. The Palestinian Prisoners Club, an advocacy organization, recorded 6,870 detentions last week.
“Israel is trying to use my mother as an example,” Hamed said. “They are trying to scare Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans. If it can happen to a Palestinian American woman, it could happen to you.
Reports of beatings and humiliating treatment
Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, allegations of forced disappearances, abuses and torture at the hands of Israeli forces have also increased.
In January, Ajith Sunghay, head of the United Nations human rights office for the occupied Palestinian territories, released a report in which he collected testimonies from detainees “beaten, humiliated, subjected to ill-treatment and other can amount to torture.
Many were detained for between 35 and 55 days, Sunghay wrote. His report and others have raised fears among the families of those detained.
“With everything we have learned that happens to Palestinian men when they are detained by Israel, especially since October 7, we just imagine the torture they face,” Elagha said of his cousins.
Hamed, meanwhile, recalled how his mother’s lawyer described bruises on her arms and back. He and his brother believe she was beaten by Israeli forces. The lawyer told them that Esmail even lost consciousness twice during a prison interview.
Not following protocols
When asked about U.S. citizens detained overseas, the State Department said it works to ensure their fair and humane treatment.
“As you know, we have no higher priority than the safety and security of American citizens abroad,” spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters on February 8.
But Maria Kari, an immigration lawyer, told Tel Aviv Tribune that the State Department’s position does not go far enough. She is working with the family of Borak and Hashem Alagha to take legal action against the government.
She told Tel Aviv Tribune that the Biden administration does not appear to have followed proper protocol for situations in which a US citizen is taken hostage or subjected to enforced disappearance, whether by a non-state or state actor.
“Here we have Israeli soldiers who wrongly arrested (the Alagha siblings) in an enforced disappearance, all of this is very illegal and in direct violation of US domestic laws and international laws,” he said. she declared.
This situation should “require immediate consular access,” she explained. “The president is supposed to be engaged. The State Department is supposed to coordinate all these teams.
“And none of that happened here,” she added, “which is appalling.”
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment from Tel Aviv Tribune on these cases.
Suliman and Ibrahim Hamed said the lack of response they received left them feeling “rebuffed.” At Monday’s press conference, they called on the United States to reconsider its steadfast support for Israel, as allegations of human rights violations in Gaza and the West Bank continue to mount.
The brothers are from Gretna, Louisiana, a town already marked by violence. Their hometown is the same as Tawfiq Ajaq, a 17-year-old Palestinian American who was killed in a January shooting involving an Israeli settler and an off-duty police officer in the occupied West Bank.
The Hamed siblings wonder if American support for Israel is denying their community justice.
“As American taxpayers, we are funding the imprisonment of not only my mother, but also innocent people, especially Palestinians,” Ibrahim said.
“If we were white Christians or Israeli Americans, would the embassy have responded sooner? » added Suliman. “This is the question I ask myself every day.”