"An amazing feeling" Plymouth family escapes Gaza into Egypt after month-long ordeal
BOSTON - A Plymouth family trying to escape the war zone in Gaza has finally made it across the border into Egypt.
"It is an amazing feeling," Hani Shafai told WBZ-TV from his office in South Dakota.
It began Monday afternoon with an email from the U.S. State Department, that Hani's brother Hazem, his sister-in-law Sanaa, and the couple's three children, Seera, Yumna and Jasser, were approved to cross the border at Rafah. And this time, it actually happened.
"For me," says Hani, "it was like 'Wow! Maybe there really is an end to this!'"
The ordeal began when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 as his brother's family was visiting relatives in Gaza -- where the Israeli effort to root out the terror threat has since left more than 10,000 Palestinian civilians dead.
And through four weeks of war, the Plymouth family sheltered among the frightened refugees -- praying no rockets would find them and wondering where their next meal would come from. They missed one chance to cross the border into Egypt when their kids' paperwork failed to show up.
"It was a tough time," says Hani. "A lot of anxiety and fear." But Hani says he never gave up hope, and neither did the family's neighbors in Plymouth, who kept after the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation and pulled off what Hani calls "the impossible."
"I feel like I'm almost beginning to know everybody in Plymouth, Massachusetts," said Hani with a smile. "It's been an amazing effort, it really has."
After five hours at the border crossing Monday, the family boarded a bus for Cairo where doctors will check them out. Contaminated water has made some of them sick.
Hani can't wait to hug his brother, but his anxiety over the events in Gaza will stick around. That's because his 85-year-old father, four brothers, and five sisters all live there, some hunkered down in a school, with 4,000 other Palestinians.
"Innocent lives should not be lost on either side," said Hani. "We pray for the safety of everyone involved and we hope that the madness will end soon."
Hani believes it will be at least three days before his brother's family is cleared to fly back to Massachusetts, hopefully by the weekend.
But his brother is anxious to get the three kids back into their Plymouth routines without the sound of missiles and artillery shells exploding nearby.
A Medway family that was also trapped in Gaza returned home to Massachusetts on Monday.