Family relieved after southern California woman escapes from Gaza
LOS ANGELES -- A southern California woman is now safe after escaping into Egypt from the war zone in Gaza.
For weeks, Nabil Alshurafa braced himself for a horrifying phone call. His mother, Naela, had been visiting relatives in Gaza when the war broke out between Hamas and Israel. Nabil had been frantically trying to find her a way out.
While Nabil spoke with his mother on the phone, he said he could hear bombs falling around her. He grew fearful that one day his relatives would report that his mother had been killed in an airstrike.
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But on Thursday, Nabil got a call he did not expect. His uncle told him Naela had exited Gaza and entered Egypt.
"He was telling us Naela, my mother, escaped. She got out. She's on the Rafah side. And he just sent this message this morning. And I could feel the tears in his eyes. And it is just so sad, because he also doesn't know if he's gonna make it; if he's ever gonna see her again," Alshurafa said.
Naela lives in Camarillo and has family in the Bay Area. For weeks, Nabil had been petitioning state representatives and the U.S State Department to do whatever they could to help her escape.
Nabil said his mother had attempted to cross into Egypt several times, but that the border was either too crowded or closed after an Israeli airstrike hit nearby. Like many Palestinian-Americans, Nabil spent many of his days at home in Chicago frantically calling his mother and their relatives, checking in to make sure they had survived the night.
"I remember after that communication blackout, I spoke to mom and she was just in tears, and everyone was in tears, because they didn't know. They thought, 'That's it. They cut us off from the world and they are just going to finish us,'" he said.
He said the phone call from his uncle that informed him his mother had left was bittersweet. His uncle, grandmother, and dozens of other relatives did not have the option to leave Gaza, and were forced to say goodbye to Naela—unsure if they would ever see her again.
"It was so hard to tell him that I was happy. Hearing him cry, a fifty-something-year-old man," he said.
Nabil said the plan is for his mother to stay with relatives in Egypt, and to rest and recover before she catches a commercial flight back to Southern California. He said his new mission was to do what he could to make the case for his elderly grandmother to be allowed into Egypt, and to share the story of civilians who he said have been given no option to flee to safety.
