As The World Celebrates Hostage Releases, Some Palestinian Families Still Feel Invisible

With all eyes on Israeli hostages returning to their families as a result of the current ceasefire, Palestinian Americans who lived or have loved ones in Gaza remain mostly invisible to their own government and Western media ― grieving the destruction of their homeland and the killing of their friends and relatives, as they have been for more than two years.

Since President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for the Middle East went into effect earlier this month, Hamas as of Wednesday has released all 20 living hostages and several deceased captives, while Israel has released nearly 2,000 living Palestinian hostages and about 90 deceased captives.

“We’ve had so many stories and family photos of the hostages on the Israeli side, and almost nothing on the Palestinian side – of the Americans who have a stake in this,” Arab American Institute founder Jim Zogby told HuffPost. “They’ve not had their story told.”

After the Oct. 7 attack, Palestinian Americans found it harder than it already was to receive government support to evacuate their loved ones from Gaza. Many of those families have spent the last two years watching their homes turn to rubble, their relatives reduced to bones and their elected officials vote to send billions of dollars in weapons for Israel to drop on their people.

“It’s just sickening. When I think about it I just get really depressed, everybody I know from Gaza has been going through the same deep depression,” Aiman Arafat, a U.S. citizen from Gaza, told HuffPost last week. “Sometimes I’m in a really bad mood. I wake up and I read the news, and it’s the same thing: copy, paste, copy, paste, every day. I just wish I’d wake up and there’s something, it’s over, but no.”

While studying in the U.S., Arafat met and married Adria, who was born and raised in a small town in Utah. The two lived in Gaza City, across from the now destroyed Al-Shifa Hospital, for nearly a decade before coming back to the U.S. and settling down in Memphis, Tennessee. The two ended their visit to Gaza one week before Hamas’ attack and Israel’s invasion, which credible human rights groups and scholars now call a genocide.

“We had friends there, we had just said goodbye to everybody,” Adria Arafat said. “We had American friends. I have a really good friend in Utah who had just come to visit her family … and she got stuck, and she saw horrific things and had to try to get to the border and try to get the embassy to get her out.”

The couple managed to get most of their relatives out of Gaza because they had a privilege many other Palestinians don’t: They could financially afford it. But unlike the international coverage some Israeli hostages and family members got, the Arafats ― and many other Palestinian Americans like them ― didn’t have the media attention to help pressure the U.S. to get their loved ones out.

“Most Americans don’t want to know the bad stuff, they really don’t,” Adria Arafat said. “‘Oh, the hostage families, we feel so bad for them,’ and this and that. OK, what about my family? What about the 67,000 Palestinians?”

Two of Aiman Arafat’s uncles in Gaza died because they did not have access to their medication or to immediate treatment, with Israeli forces having destroyed most of the enclave’s health care system. His brother, who says he’s been displaced a dozen times in Gaza, is alive but starving due to the famine engineered by Israel’s blockade.

As for their Gaza City apartment, the Arafats say that Israeli forces have destroyed the building, at one point allegedly using it as an interrogation room. Soldiers also destroyed the home of Aiman’s mother ― now in Egypt ― who he said is so particular about her decor that the family nicknamed it “the museum.”

“So the Israelis go home to joy, and the Palestinians go home to devastation and rubble,” Zogby said. “The issue that nobody is taking into consideration is the human toll of rebuilding. What do you do with tens of thousands of kids wounded with no surviving family members? What do you do with the 12-year-old kid who has moved already 10 times in the last two years, goes back to where he lived, and it’s not just the house that’s gone but the whole neighborhood is gone.”

Zogby joined the Arafats and a couple other Palestinian Americans this week in meeting with lawmakers like Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), to ensure Congress keeps pressure on rebuilding Gaza, blocking arms to Israel, and refusing to leave Palestinian Americans and their loved ones behind now that a fragile plan is underway.

Welch told the delegation on Wednesday that a two-state solution is “a long way from here to there,” but that it’s got to be the goal ― starting with surging aid into the enclave so that Palestinians can nourish and heal before starting reconstruction with the help of the U.S. and Arab nations. Israel and the Trump administration continue to reject the idea of a Palestinian state.

On Tuesday, U.N. development experts estimated that rebuilding Gaza to make it safer post-war will require at least $70 billion, while aid agencies said that far too little aid is entering the enclave to meet the needs of desperate Palestinians. Israel said starting Wednesday, it will only allow half the originally agreed upon number of aid trucks into Gaza, and the U.N.’s human rights office said soldiers are still killing Palestinians under the ceasefire.

“I want the bombing to stop, I want the aid to get in. I want people to be able to not hear constant drones over them. That’s what I want,” Adria Arafat said. “Now the cost of that is trusting these people that have never kept a treaty, never kept their word, going backwards on everything they’ve ever promised. So I don’t hold my breath because if I hold my breath, I’ll turn purple and pass out.”

Ramirez, who introduced the Block the Bombs Act, said on Wednesday she is open to the idea that a delegation of lawmakers visit Gaza on the ground to properly evaluate what the next steps are in securing safety and justice for Palestinians in the short and long term. That justice, Palestinians have said for years, must involve governments and media first recognizing their humanity, just as they do for Israelis.

“Before Gaza is not like after Gaza. The world is a different place,” Aiman Arafat said. “So it’s a big, huge price to pay, but I think I can see and taste and feel freedom coming for a lot of my people. So we have to be hopeful and positive.”