A man holds his granddaughter amid rubble in Khan Younis in Gaza on Oct. 30 (Loay Ayyoub/The Washington Post)
The successful departure from Gaza into Egypt of five American aid workers on Wednesday was orchestrated with considerable help behind the scenes from a small group of U.S. military veterans who rushed to Israel as its military response to Hamas’s cross-border attack trapped hundreds of other Americans in the violence.
All five women, among the first Americans permitted to leave through the border crossing at Rafah in southern Gaza, spent much of the past month inside a U.N. compound under makeshift tents, and with little access to clean water and food amid the Israelis’ unrelenting bombardment.
The veterans, former special operations troops who played a similar role during the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan two years ago, were the women’s lifeline to safety, one of the aid workers, Emily “Callie” Callahan, said Thursday. They worked to keep the aid workers informed of efforts to extract them, shared survival techniques and saw to it that they were put on a list ensuring their entry into Egypt.
Callahan, who spoke to The Washington Post from Cairo, said that amid conflicting rumors and, at times, uncertainty about whether she would survive, characterized their help as offering reassurance — and hope.
“Last night,” she said, “was the first night we didn’t have an airstrike or explosion near us since the attacks.”
Those involved said the success story illustrates the growing importance of nongovernment organizations that can fill intelligence and communication gaps, and support evacuation efforts in dangerous parts of the world where U.S. officials’ presence and situational awareness is limited or nonexistent. It’s a role they intend to continue to fill, in the Middle East and elsewhere, using extensive connections built during their military service and deployments.
Two veteran-run organizations, the Special Operations Association of America and Save Our Allies, sent roughly two dozen members into Israel and Egypt after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack to support evacuations, said Alex Plitsas, an SOAA board member who has helped coordinate the volunteers overseas from his home in the United States. Each volunteer was chosen based on having experience working with Egyptians or Israelis, he said.
Initially, their efforts focused on what Plitsas calls “shepherding,” helping to place Americans on daily flights coordinated by the State Department and on separate charter flights to Cyprus.
Plitsas and Callahan, who is a nurse practitioner, were put in contact by a mutual friend. His team assessed the aid workers’ physical and mental health and relayed their whereabouts to officials with the U.S. State Department and the Israeli military to warn against targeting the location with strikes. They helped arrange for Palestinian nationals to provide food and medical supplies, and they reached the Egyptian military personnel who ultimately had to approve the women’s departure.
“All that together,” Plitsas said, “ensured they were all there on top of the list.”
The five women moved throughout Gaza five times in the 25 days between the Hamas attacks and their departure into Egypt, said Callahan, 33. Communications were sparse: Her international cellphone plan did not work in the Gaza Strip, she said, and her Palestinian work phone would sometimes take hours to transmit or receive a text message. It wasn’t until at least a week after the attacks, while they were staying at a U.N. facility in Khan Younis, that a State Department worker was able to get through to one of the women.
“All anyone could tell us the entire time was, all parties are in negotiations. … Everyone involved is trying to get safe crossing through Rafah. That is the goal,” Callahan recalled.
Plitsas and his group’s volunteers in the region were unable to change the women’s material circumstances, but they found other ways to help. An Army veteran and former Pentagon official, he shared skills developed during his own experiences in combat zones. For instance, he instructing them to sit with their backs to a car tire — against the sturdy metal of the axle — in case of a firefight.
“We made sure that everybody and their mother knew that they were there, so that they had a level of comfort, mentally, that people were coming for them … that their location was marked, so that they weren’t going to be hit,” Plitsas said.
On the night of Oct. 27, Callahan sent Plitsas a video showing gunfire and explosions near the U.N. compound where she and the others had taken shelter. He quickly surmised that Israeli forces were conducting a ground raid and sought to reassure her that the shooting sounded “disciplined” and that they were unlikely to be collateral damage.
At another point, thousands of internally displaced Palestinians attempted to force their way into the compound because they believed there were food stockpiles there, Callahan said. Though she said she never believed the people would intentionally hurt her, the experience was frightening.
The complex trauma of struggling to survive in a war zone and observing the suffering of others also proved a space where Plitsas sought to reassure and comfort the workers. Living among Palestinian refugees, they often all were nearly out of food and water, and the aid workers saw the deprivation around them. Some civilians, she said, underwent surgery without anesthesia, and others died.
“I didn’t have to explain how terrified I was,” Callahan said of Plitsas. “He got it, and how unfair it is to watch civilian life be destroyed … and know that there’s nothing you can do about it, while at the same time being in a life-threatening situation.”
SOAA staff who were in Tel Aviv helping to coordinate evacuations characterized their work as augmenting efforts of U.N. personnel, other nongovernmental groups and local Palestinians, who kept the women safe and moved them as needed while they awaited a negotiated exit. One volunteer who helped coordinate communications for the aid workers said he was impressed with how quickly the U.S. government moved to arrange transportation options for Americans out of Israel. This person spoke on the condition of anonymity citing fears for his safety and for other Americans trying to assist.
The volunteers eschew “James Bond” tactics and refuse to cross lines into government responsibilities, such as hostage rescue, Plitsas said. He added that their work illustrates that there is room in the complex and messy work of humanitarian evacuations for unofficial case workers who can use open-source technology and human networks to reach where government officials can’t.
“There’s that gap in the middle there,” he said, “of helping to find people, navigate them and keep them safe, until the government can do what it needs to do.”
