Washington DC – “Reception confirmed.” That's the only message Yasmeen Elagha received from the U.S. government after two of her cousins, both Palestinian Americans, were detained by Israeli forces while sheltering near Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
Now, he is calling on US President Joe Biden's administration to do more to ensure his safety and release. Elagha said his two cousins, Borak Alagha, 18, and Hashem Alagha, 20, are being held without charge.
“We have pleaded with the United States government,” explained Elagha, a law student at Northwestern University in Chicago. “The administration is totally failing in its duty.”
Theirs is one of several families pushing for the protection of Palestinian Americans detained in Israeli custody as the war in Gaza drags on. They gathered in Washington, D.C., for a news conference Monday to press for action.
From the podium, Elagha explained that she learned of her cousins' kidnapping in a Feb. 7 phone call to her aunt in Gaza. Through tears, her aunt told how Israeli soldiers broke into her shelter in al-Mowasi, near Khan Younis, and tied up the women and children.
The men suffered a different fate. Elagha's aunt described how the two cousins were taken, along with her father, her uncle and two other male relatives. The soldiers left the shelter destroyed and the tires of the family's car slashed, according to Elagha's aunt. None of the men have been heard from since.
In the days that followed, Elagha sent a flurry of emails to the US embassies in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Cairo, as well as a US task force in Gaza. She only received a response confirming that her appeal had been received.
The wait for information has been unbearable, he said. “Minutes seem like hours, so it seems like a month has already passed since they disappeared.”
False Charge Allegations
Louisiana resident Suliman Hamed shared a similar experience at the event, organized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
He said his Palestinian American mother, Samaher Esmail, 46, was detained by Israel in the occupied West Bank last Monday and he has not been able to speak to her since.
He explained that he only received one call from an embassy official after his arrest. Days have passed, but consular staff have not yet visited her where she is being held at the Damon prison in Haifa, Hamed explained.
“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and now Monday again. “No one from the US embassy has visited or spoken to my mother, a US citizen,” she said.
While waiting in prison, Hamed worries about his mother's health. Her attorney told her that she has not received her medication since she was arrested.
“It's been seven days and he still hasn't received a single medication. This has caused her condition to worsen immensely,” Hamad said. “We have repeatedly asked the US embassy to send a consular officer to my mother, so we can get an update on her condition.”
His mother was arrested on accusations of “social media incitement,” he explained. Hamed and her brother Ibrahim fear she was attacked in retaliation for a lawsuit she filed against the Israeli military, after allegedly being beaten during a traffic stop in 2022.
Human rights groups have long accused Israeli authorities of using false accusations of “incitement” to repress Palestinians and stifle free speech.
But overall arrests in the occupied West Bank have increased since the war began on October 7. The Palestinian Prisoners Club, an advocacy organization, has documented 6,870 arrests as of last week.
“Israel is trying to use my mother as an example,” Hamed said. “They are trying to scare Palestinians and Palestinian Americans. “If this can happen to a Palestinian American woman, this could happen to you.”
Allegations of beatings and humiliating treatment
Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, accusations of forced disappearances, abuse and torture at the hands of Israeli forces have also proliferated.
In January, Ajith Sunghay, head of the United Nations Human Rights Office for the occupied Palestinian territories, published a report in which he collected accounts of detainees who had been “beaten, humiliated, subjected to ill-treatment and what could amount to to torture.”
Many were held for between 35 and 55 days, Sunghay wrote. Her report, and others, have sparked fears among detainees' families.
“With everything we have learned that happens to Palestinian men when they are detained by Israel, especially since October 7, we are only imagining the torture they face,” Elagha said of his cousins.
Meanwhile, Hamed recalled how his mother's lawyer described bruises on her arms and back. He and her brother believe that Israeli forces beat her. The lawyer told them that Esmail even lost consciousness twice during a prison interview.
Not following protocols
When asked about U.S. citizens detained abroad, the State Department said it is working to ensure their fair and humane treatment.
“As you know, we have no higher priority than the safety of American citizens abroad,” spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters on February 8.
But Maria Kari, an immigration lawyer, told Al Jazeera that the State Department's stance does not go far enough. She is working with Borak and Hashem Alagha's family to file a lawsuit against the government.
He told Al Jazeera that the Biden administration appears to have not followed proper protocol for situations in which a US citizen is taken hostage or forcibly disappeared, whether by a state or non-state actor.
“Here we have Israeli soldiers who have unjustly detained [the Alagha siblings] in a forced disappearance, all very illegal and in direct contravention of both US national laws and international laws,” he said.
That situation should “require consular access immediately,” he explained. “The president is supposed to be committed. “The State Department is supposed to coordinate all of these teams.”
“And none of that has happened here,” he added, “which is appalling.”
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment from Al Jazeera on the cases.
Suliman and Ibrahim Hamed said the lack of response they received made them feel “discarded.” At Monday's press conference, they called on the United States to reconsider its unwavering support for Israel, as accusations of human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank continue to mount.
The brothers are from Gretna, Louisiana, a city already marked by violence. His hometown is the same as Tawfiq Ajaq, a 17-year-old Palestinian-American who was killed in January in a shooting involving an Israeli settler and an off-duty police officer in the occupied West Bank.
The Hamed brothers questioned whether US support for Israel is denying justice to their community.
“We, as American taxpayers, are funding this imprisonment not only of my mother but of innocent people, especially the Palestinians,” Ibrahim said.
“If we were white Christians or Israeli Americans, would the embassy have responded sooner?” Suliman added. “This is the question I ask myself every day.”
