Sara Rubin here, writing while Rolla Alaydi is, hopefully, asleep. The Pacific Grove woman, originally from Gaza, has taken up residence in a hotel in Cairo, waiting for news about the broader region and her family, although three weeks into her month-long stay, the news just keeps getting worse. (It’s the middle of the night in Egypt as this newsletter goes out, but sleep is hard to come by for Alaydi, who says she’s had a days-long stomach ache.)
Alaydi, like many of us, has been consumed by news of the war. But she is reading articles about updates to the Israeli Defense Forces’ strategy that are not a faraway military news item, but matter to the fate of her siblings, their spouses, and their children. She took a one-month leave from her job teaching Arabic to travel to Cairo, hoping to be on the ground to help process her family’s evacuation out of Gaza—she has applied on their behalf for emergency visas to join her in the United States.
She left on April 28. Then a week later, on May 6, the Rafah border crossing shut down. While she’s still waiting on visa approvals, she is so close geographically, yet so far away from her family.
“Even if they get approved, they are trapped,” she says. “I have been fighting, fighting, and I get to the point of—what can I do? I feel no hope at all. I was close, and full of hope, but suddenly that hope vanished.”
For Alaydi, this story is very specific—it’s a question of whether her family will survive, and whether she will ever see them again since she left Gaza to study in the U.S. 23 years ago, ultimately building a life here in Monterey County, a world away. But in talking to her briefly over WhatsApp this morning, I hear echoes of concerns that are much more general: What does it even mean to be hopeful in times like these?
There’s been so much criticism of protesters who aren’t schooled in history or diplomacy in a unique and complex region. But when I have spoken to local protesters, their message is one of peace. It is entirely reasonable to leave the policy questions of What Comes Next to the experts, and for activists to ask for an end to a humanitarian crisis. (Some local protesters have asked not for grand international policy schemes, but made much more locally focused, specific requests.)
Meanwhile, the news continues to be a barrage of politics mixed with sadness. The International Criminal Court issued warrants for Hamas leaders and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Of roughly 250 hostages kidnapped by Hamas fighters on Oct. 7, 124 remain in Gaza. Zones under evacuation orders in Rafah have expanded as IDF operations develop, impacting Alaydi’s family—along with hundreds of thousands of others who were already displaced—forcing them to move again, across the city.
Alaydi, meanwhile, may be forced to return to her own family and job and life here in Pacific Grove with questions unresolved for her family members. “I feel like I am failing them, the world is failing them,” she says.