These American doctors went to help in Gaza. Now they’re trapped.

They have waited all week, and that moment hasn’t come.

“We’ve come to terms with the fact that we don’t know when we’re leaving," said Dr. Adam Hamawy, a 54-year-old plastic surgeon from South Brunswick, N.J., who missed his daughter’s graduation from Rutgers University on Tuesday because he couldn’t get home.

The crew of 19, including 10 Americans and one U.S. permanent resident, arrived in Gaza on May 1 for a medical mission that was set to span almost two weeks. 

But Israel’s seizure on May 7 of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing to Egypt left them trapped, and they aren’t alone: Civilians have been prevented from leaving Gaza—and aid from entering—through the Rafah crossing, which had been one of the main arteries in or out of the besieged territory.

The doctors came to provide urgent medical assistance in Gaza, where most of the healthcare infrastructure has collapsed during Israel’s war with Hamas, now in its eighth month. They face a critical shortage of medical supplies, as they use up sutures, antibiotics and sterile equipment that they brought for a two-week mission.

The group was scheduled to leave Gaza on Monday but was told there was no longer a safe corridor. They have been waiting at the site of their volunteer work, European Hospital, on the northern edge of Rafah.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration is “working to get the impacted American citizens out of Gaza" and has engaged with its Israeli counterparts on the subject. “We need to get them out," Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday. “These are Americans."

Egypt, frustrated with Israel’s military operation in Rafah, refuses to cooperate with Israel to operate the crossing. Some United Nations workers used the Kerem Shalom crossing, usually reserved for goods only, to relieve colleagues inside Gaza this week, but it isn’t clear if the American medical volunteers will eventually be able to use that route.

To reach either of the southern border crossings, the group will need to safely pass through areas of active military presence and activity in the city of Rafah, where over one million Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting elsewhere in the strip.

In the past two weeks, hundreds of thousands have fled north and west as Israeli forces intensify ground operations aimed at rooting out Hamas militants. On Thursday, the Israeli military said it was sending additional brigades to southern Gaza, signaling an intensifying conflict in a city that has become the latest point of tension between the U.S. and Israel.

Hamawy said his wife and four children are increasingly worried about his safety, though he has tried to reassure them. “We have a false sense of security here," he said. “I’m working with a lot of doctors who have worked in other hospitals and had to flee them."

The group of medical professionals traveled with the Palestinian American Medical Association, a nonprofit that arranges medical missions to the West Bank and Gaza and supports healthcare training for Palestinians. The nonprofit has been coordinating with the World Health Organization and the U.N. to help the group get out of Gaza. The team also includes foreign nationals from Jordan, Egypt and Australia.

Some U.S. lawmakers are putting pressure on the Biden administration and the Israeli government to ensure their safe return. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D., Ill.,) who credits Hamawy with saving her life when she was wounded in the Iraq war, has been in touch with him directly this week. 

Hamawy was one of the trauma surgeons stationed in Iraq who treated Duckworth when her helicopter was struck down in 2004. Duckworth has raised the plight of the volunteer group with both the White House National Security Council and the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Herzog, her office said.

Doctors on the team described a humanitarian situation that was dire even before the cutoff of aid deliveries. They spoke of having to make decisions about rationing medical supplies among patients who had a better chance of survival.

Dr. Mohamad Abdelfattah, a 37-year-old from Orange County, Calif., who is part of the group, said most of the patients coming in are children, many with burns covering 60% to 80% of their bodies. More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war in October, most of them civilians, Palestinian officials say, without specifying how many were combatants.

“In Gaza, with the lack of staff and the lack of proper supplies, it’s just a guaranteed death," he said. “They call them a hopeless case."

On Thursday, the group received five victims, all under the age of 18, whose nearby house had been hit by Israeli forces, according to the doctors. None of the five survived. 

Among them was a 5-year-old girl, her nails painted glitter pink and her hair in braids, who suffered from severe head trauma and fractured ribs. Abdelfattah said the doctors attempted CPR for 30 minutes but were unable to resuscitate her.

Treating the children has been harrowing for Abdelfattah, who has a 2-year-old and a five-month-old back home. This week, he said, a child told him he hadn’t eaten in two to three days.

As fears of famine grip Gaza, the doctors described patients who had lost 30-to-40 pounds since the war began and were eager to show them photos of what they looked like before. The doctors, who brought enough supplies for a two-week stint, now eat one meal a day. Staying in dorm rooms at the hospital complex, they are rationing water and snacks.

Monica Johnston, a registered nurse on the mission trip, said she was surprised to learn when she arrived that basic supplies such as hand soap, paper towels and linens for patients weren’t available.

Some patients were living off a can of Ensure for an entire day, Johnston said. Malnutrition has made it impossible for their wounds to heal.

“Patients have no chance of success here," she said.

Johnston has a teenage son and daughter waiting at home in Portland, Ore. She typically texts her loved ones once in the morning and once before she goes to bed. One day, an internet outage kept her from her morning check-in; she couldn’t stop worrying about what her family might be thinking, she said.

Members of the medical team say that the Palestinian American Medical Association has told them repeatedly that efforts are under way to arrange for a trial convoy to check on passage to Rafah the next day—but then word arrives that the plan isn’t panning out. The aid group didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“It’s this constant dangling of a carrot—maybe, maybe not, maybe, maybe not," Johnston said. “You feel like a guinea pig. What’s to say that the next convoy doesn’t run into problems? It’s left a really sick feeling among us."

Despite the many unknowns, one thing is certain: The team doesn’t want to abandon the hospital and patients in Gaza without another mission taking its place. Another group of medical professionals, including some Americans, has been waiting in Egypt to take over, but it also is unable to cross the border. Some have gone home because of the delay.

Abdelfattah said the Palestinians they have been working with see their presence as a form of protection—an assurance, almost, that the hospital won’t be attacked while foreign nationals are there.

“The locals know there’s no safe space in Gaza," he said. “Everyone is expecting the worst."