Palestinian Americans stuck in Gaza as all-out Israeli invasion looms
JERUSALEM — It was Tuesday, three days after Hamas militants launched the deadliest attack on Israel in over 50 years, slaughtering hundreds of civilians and sparking a ferocious Israeli response, that Nabil Al Shurafa realized that helping his mother leave Gaza was going to be a difficult task.
Until that morning, the American-born Al Shurafa, a 39-year-old medical researcher in Chicago, thought his 66-year-old mother, Naela, naturalized in the late 1990s and a 20-year resident of Camarillo, would be able to leave the enclave, despite the relentless Israeli bombing campaign.
“She’s a U.S. citizen,” he said. “Everyone was saying, ‘No way would they keep U.S. citizens here.’”
Hours earlier, his mother, who had been visiting Al Shurafa’s sick grandmother in Gaza since the beginning of the month, had made her way to
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