“It’s getting dark, it’s already getting loud. We’ve heard a few bombings in the area. We’re not going to have electricity for the rest of the night,” she told NBC News in a separate message.
Emilee Rauschenberger, who was in Khan Yunis with her Palestinian husband and five children visiting family, said they lined up at the crossing for at least 10 hours before having to return to Khan Yunis. This wasn’t the family’s first time trying to cross the border.
“People are again, just waiting around frustrated and exhausted,” Rauschenberger said of the scene at Rafah crossing, adding that some people have been there for days on end, even sleeping by it, in hopes of it opening.
Crowds of people could be seen standing and sitting by the crossing surrounded by luggage. On the crossing gates was a sign that read “Danger the crossing is threatened by bombing.”
“We are human beings, we are not human animals,” said Adil Salem, who is trying to cross Rafah to get back home to Missouri. “There is no safe haven in Gaza, there is no safe road in Gaza, there is no humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. There is nothing, there’s nothing but bombs and bombs and bombs, and blood and bodies,” he said.
The State Department continues to advise Americans inside Gaza to go to the crossing if it’s safe to do so. “There may be very little notice if the crossing opens, and it may only open for a limited time,” according to communications sent via texts and emails from the State Department that were shared with NBC News.
The U.S. does not have officials at the border crossing, according to a senior State Department official. “So the situation is we have been trying. The Egyptians have told us there are acute security threats there that prevent it,” the official said.
Egypt has remained steadfast in its reluctance to fully open the border, which sustained physical damage from Israeli airstrikes on Monday as well as last week. Israel shelled the area in front of the Rafah crossing, essentially cutting off the roads, according to local media reports.
Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry said during remarks on Monday that the country has been seeking to open the Rafah crossing since the start of the conflict, and the Israeli government’s position hasn’t been conducive to its opening.
“Until now, unfortunately, the Israeli government has not taken a position that would lead to the possibility of opening the crossing from the Gaza side to allow the entry of aid or the exit of citizens from other countries,” Shoukry said.
Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to President Biden, on Sunday told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his priority is to have “safe places that civilians can go that will not be subject to bombardments” and that he is working with the U.N., Israel, Egypt and Jordan to try to ensure that. He acknowledged that no American citizens have been able to cross.
More than 2,800 people have been killed in Gaza and 10,859 have been injured in the violence following the unprecedented Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that targeted civilians, including women and children in kibbutzim and at a music festival. In Israel, 1,400 people have been killed and 3,900 have been wounded. The toll of American deaths from Hamas’ attack on Israel and the subsequent war stands at 30, a State Department spokesperson said Sunday.
Helal Kaoud, a Palestinian American who along with other members of her family has been desperately trying to get their five U.S. citizen fathers — all brothers — out of Gaza, said her father waited in line but no one was there to help. The destruction from Israeli bombing near the crossing has left him skeptical that Rafah will open any time soon.
“He said that there’s trenches from the bombs on either side and that it would be impossible to drive or even walk over there,” Kaoud told NBC News. “He said they’d have to fill those up for anything to go in or out and that’ll probably take days and now he thinks they’re just messing with people telling them it’s open.”