Abood Okal, a Palestinian American stuck in Gaza, received the email at 5 a.m. Monday and headed for the Rafah crossing with his wife and toddler son. When they arrived, they found the gates locked and border guards from the Hamas-run interior ministry in plainclothes informing people that the crossing was closed.
So he and other Palestinians with foreign passports waited, hoping it would open. The crowd was not huge, Mr. Okal, 36, said in an interview, but he recognized many people in it. They were fellow Americans he had seen at Rafah on Saturday, when Americans and dual citizens were previously told by U.S. officials that they could leave.
“You can see the familiar faces,” Mr. Okal said.
After spending hours at the border on Monday, he had to run off to secure medicine for his 18-month-old son, who had a fever, and to find drinking water.
Mukhaimer Abu Saada, a Palestinian political scientist who holds a U.S. green card, said American officials called him on Monday to tell him that the border could open at any moment and that he should be able to go on short notice. It could not come soon enough — his two sons, 29 and 27, both American citizens, were with him in Gaza, and scared.
