A bipartisan group of 45 House members wrote to President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday urging officials to act promptly to facilitate evacuations of American citizens from Israel, or at least provide them with additional information on efforts to allow for such evacuations.

They argued that communication from the administration to this point has been inadequate, leaving Americans without clear information or a path to leave Israel. They asked the administration to provide information to them by Wednesday that they can convey to their constituents.

“Americans in Israel are depending on our government for guidance and a pathway to safety,” the letter, obtained by Jewish Insider, reads. “All available options including evacuations by land routes and sea must be explored. At a minimum, American citizens in Israel deserve updates on the efforts underway to ensure their safe departure.”

The lawmakers criticized the State Department for failing to provide any additional information beyond directing them to enroll in the State Department’s travel registration and information program.

“We trust that you will honor our responsibility to protect the American people, no matter where they are in the world,” the lawmakers wrote. 

The letter was led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Wesley Bell (D-MO). The majority of the signatories were Democrats but two Republicans — Reps. Don Bacon (R-NE) and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) — also signed on.

The U.S. embassy’s offices in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are set to be closed through at least Friday, the State Department announced.

Last Thursday, Sam Heller went to sleep at a Tel Aviv hotel, thinking that any potential military action between Israel and Iran wouldn’t start until after his flight back to the U.S., scheduled for Saturday night. 

He was wrong.

When Home Front Command alerts woke Heller at 3 a.m. on Friday, informing the nation that Israel had launched a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, he quickly booked the first flight out to Paris from Ben Gurion Airport.

“I went straight to the airport, and they locked the doors to Ben-Gurion, and they stopped letting people in,” Heller told Jewish Insider on Tuesday, safely back home in Cleveland. “They’re like, ‘We’re closing our airspace indefinitely. Your flight’s been canceled. All flights are canceled. You can’t get out.’”

Like some 38,000 other foreign visitors stranded in Israel after the country’s preemptive strikes on Iran prompted days of Iranian ballistic missile attacks on Israel, Heller began to try to think of creative ways to leave the country. First he called an Israeli shipping company and asked if he could travel as a stowaway on a cargo ship heading to Cyprus. They told him yes, at a cost of 87,000 Euros for 12 people. He said no.

Then Heller, who was visiting Israel as the last leg of a monthlong trip after graduating from the University of Michigan in May, called a sailing company from which he had rented a boat two years ago. They told him the only boat suitable for travel to Cyprus was out of commission. Another no. Next, a phone call to a company that offers helicopter tours of Israel, thinking helicopters might not be included in the ban on flying. Nope. 

Finally, he tracked down a company that offers private security details in the Middle East. There, he identified a circuitous route out of Israel that took him 36 hours: departing Israel through the Taba border crossing to Egypt, being driven three-and-a-half hours to Sharm el-Sheikh and taking a flight from the Sinai resort town to Istanbul. He left Israel Saturday night after Shabbat and landed in Cleveland at 11 p.m. the next day. That’s a relatively fast trip compared to others who have made it out.

In the days since the Iran-Israel war started, a cottage industry has emerged to help ferry people from Israel to other destinations around the globe. 

Israeli airspace was closed for five days and the U.S. Embassy said it was unable to assist Americans seeking to evacuate. After the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, several State Department-led charter flights brought Americans to Athens — but charter flights were not an option following Israel’s attack on Iran and the ensuing war between the two countries. A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on Tuesday.

El Al canceled all flights out of the country through at least June 23, and foreign carriers pulled out of Israel for longer. Israeli carriers El Al, Arkia and Israir announced on Tuesday that they received permission from the Israeli government to organize repatriation flights to bring back Israelis stranded abroad. The first two flights from Larnaca, Cyprus, landed at Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday morning. 

The Israeli Tourism Ministry launched an effort on Tuesday to facilitate the departure of tourists from the country, distributing a digital registration form for departure flights from the country. 

But until those flights begin, in WhatsApp threads, Facebook groups and private messages, Americans stuck in Israel are passing along any information they can find to try to help get themselves and their loved ones home. The details are hard to verify. The costs range from expensive to astronomical. 

One graphic shared widely on WhatsApp advertises an emergency evacuation flight from Israel to New York, promising a Wednesday afternoon departure to Eilat and a bus transfer to Sharm el-Sheikh, followed by a charter flight to Milan and then a connection to JFK — “lavish meals included” and “security escorted” — for $2,200 a person. According to the travel company’s website, though, it was already sold out by the time the graphic circulated. Another message advertised a chartered flight from Aqaba, Jordan — near Eilat — to Paris, for $3,000 a person. Abraham Tours, a travel company best known for its hostels in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, advertised a cross-border transfer to Amman for $438. 

Adir Fischer is the vice president of marketing at Magnus Safety, a global search-and-rescue company based in Israel that is arranging boats to take people between Haifa and Larnaca, Cyprus. He can fit about 25 people on a tugboat for a 17-hour journey, costing between 1,000 and 2,000 Euros a person. 

“If you have three kids and a husband, it’s around 7,000 Euros a trip. Not everyone has it liquid, and it’s prepaid,” Fischer told JI on Tuesday. That’s before adding in the cost of flights from Cyprus back to the U.S. Still, he has turned away over 100 people because there isn’t enough room on the boats. 

One American woman who lives in Israel plans to depart on Wednesday on a small boat privately arranged by her husband’s company. They will be traveling with their six-month-old baby and two friends, at a cost of $15,000 for the five people. 

“Either I’m brave, crazy or an idiot. I’m not quite sure yet. But we really want to get out,” she said, requesting anonymity to speak about sensitive travel details. 

Early Sunday morning, Shira Raviv Schwartz woke up to a red alert. She was in Israel visiting her cousin, a trip she takes most summers. Soon after, her apartment building in Tel Aviv shook violently. In the morning, Schwartz saw that the next block had sustained a direct hit from an Iranian ballistic missile. She decided she needed to leave with her husband, their young adult son and her 84-year-old father-in-law. 

“I can’t take another night anxious in the safe room,” Schwartz said from Amman, where the family awaits a flight to Cairo, then another to Athens and finally a flight home to Chicago. 

Large tour groups have been luckier than individuals or families, who have to sort through the options themselves. Birthright Israel arranged for a private luxury cruise ship to bring 1,500 American young adults to Cyprus, where they boarded four planes back to the U.S. chartered by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

Jonathan Schanzer, who was leading a delegation hosted by his think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, worked with the organization’s staff to get the group to Amman via the Allenby Bridge, the only border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan. (This is not an option for Israelis, who are not permitted to pass there.) He considered whether driving to Allenby amid the threat of incoming Iranian missiles was too dangerous but decided to risk it.

“Every security specialist warned me that the time in the war away from a shelter was the dangerous period, and I understood that,” Schanzer told JI. “But we were running out of programming for our participants and they were all sleep-deprived, as was I, from the incessant sirens every night. They didn’t sign up for this.” 

Jerusalem travel agent Mark Feldman said the key is not to tell clients what to do, but to give them options.

“Let him or her make the choice. I would never want to be responsible for somebody taking a 24-hour boat to Cyprus, throwing up the whole way, and emailing me saying it was the worst time of their life,” Feldman, the CEO of Ziontours, told JI. 

His business is at capacity simply trying to get existing clients into and out of Israel. His advice to those without a connection to a travel agent is to stick to trusted sources and avoid the “incredible amount of rumor-mongering.” Mostly, he is advising people to be patient, particularly those who do not have the appetite for a dayslong odyssey through multiple countries. 

But those who are waiting until the airspace reopens are not going to have an easy time leaving, Feldman warned. 

“Hard as it is just calming people down and relaxing them, the problem will come when the airport is open, and the thousands of people that are stuck here won’t have flights to get out,” said Feldman. If the airspace opens on June 23, the flights departing that day will be the ones that were initially scheduled for June 23 — meaning anyone with a June 23 ticket will have a confirmed seat. Everyone who has been stuck in Israel for days will be competing with each other for the empty seats.

“Many people assume, ‘Because I was bumped, I get first priority,’” said Feldman. “You don’t.”

The U.S.’ moves to evacuate some State Department personnel and military families from the Middle East are seen by experts as a potential sign of a U.S. or Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program — or, at least, a signal to Iran that the U.S. is prepared for such action, ahead of a planned round of nuclear talks with Tehran. 

The moves come as President Donald Trump’s self-imposed deadline for the talks is approaching this week, and Trump has expressed public frustration with the lack of progress being made. There have been conflicting reports about whether the talks expected this weekend are still slated to occur.

The State Department is drawing down personnel in Iraq, the department said, and the Pentagon is allowing for voluntary departures of military families from locations in the Middle East. The United Kingdom, separately, issued a maritime trade warning about a potential “escalation of military activity” in the Middle East.

Dana Stroul, the research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, noted that the Trump administration had conducted mandatory drawdowns of State Department personnel in Iraq at the end of the first Trump administration. The Pentagon evacuations, she noted, are thus far optional.

“This was part of the Iran policy approach [during Trump’s first administration] to increase pressure on the Iraqi government to get attack[s] against U.S. forces to stop,” Stroul told Jewish Insider. “So some of the people making these decisions inside the Trump administration have prior experience with reducing our presence in the region as part of a pressure play against Iran.”

But, she added, a “reduction in military families in the Gulf is the first step military planners would want to take if they were trying to reduce risk to U.S. personnel before large-scale, significant military operations.”

“If you’re trying to minimize risk before significant military operations, this is what you do. But right now they’re voluntary, not ordered,” Stroul continued.

Stroul argued that, in combination with the recent call between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump’s public comments that he’s been frustrated by Iran’s posture in negotiations, “Tehran should take notice.”

Daniel Shapiro, Stroul’s successor in the deputy assistant secretary role, said that the administration “is clearly into some major preparations for possible military action vs Iran (by US and/or Israel).”

“A useful signal ahead of round 6 of nuke talks,” Shapiro continued. “Need to be prepared to back it up.”

Jason Brodsky, the policy director for United Against Nuclear Iran, framed the move as a likely sign of action, noting that congressional testimony by Gen. Erik Kurilla, who leads U.S. Central Command, set for Thursday morning, had been postponed.

“Something is cooking,” Brodsky said.

John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, told JI he believes that the moves are primarily an “unambiguous signal to the Iranians in advance of the next round of talks that U.S. patience is not unlimited and that time may be running out for them.”

He said the steps will take time to carry out but “they all have the indicia of the classic playbook that the United States would start rolling out in advance of anticipated hostilities. And of course it’s all being undertaken without much stealth and secrecy, but rather in a manner that ensures the Iranians and the rest of the world will know about it.”

He added that it “doesn’t necessarily have to be just one or the other,” and the moves should leave Iran guessing.

“The fact that the immediate purpose of these moves might primarily be a signaling mechanism to influence Iran’s posture in the negotiations doesn’t ipso facto mean it’s all just a bluff — although, if we’re honest, bluffing and then retreating is clearly often an integral part of President Trump’s negotiating MO and the ‘art of the deal,’” Hannah said. “That said, it could also be a deadly serious first step to put Iran on notice that it’s got one last chance to take the deal on offer or face the wrath of a U.S. military strike.” 

“Trump is perfectly capable of going either way and the Iranians shouldn’t sleep too comfortably trying to figure out which one of those possibilities  they’re facing,” he continued. “If they guess wrong, the outcome for them is potentially catastrophic.”

Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, framed the moves more as a negotiating tactic.

“Ahead of round 6, the U.S. is signaling: failure at the table means real consequences,” Dubowitz said on X. “Starting to move non-essential personnel and families —reversible but not trivial. Message to Khamenei: you can end this peacefully, or face serious preparedness if you don’t.”

Kurilla said in response to a question from lawmakers on Tuesday about retaliation from a potential Israeli strike on Iran that the U.S. is continually assessing threats to military personnel in the Middle East and taking steps to address potential vulnerabilities.