As Congress woke from its New Year’s break earlier this month, Sammy Nabulsi hustled to get an urgent plea on behalf of Gazans across in Washington, D.C.
The Boston lawyer, a partner at Rose Law who usually handles zoning, environment, and other real estate matters, met with senators, staffers, and immigration lawyers. After around 48 hours in D.C., he was back in Boston before midnight after a second day of lobbying.
It was a busy pair of days for someone who says he’s “not a politically connected person.” Though the details changed from meeting to meeting, Nabulsi’s core message remained the same: The country needs to do more to help Gazans with American ties escape the war-torn strip.
“We just did back-to-back-to-back with anyone who was willing to sit and meet with us and hear us out,” Nabulsi said.
For months, the 34-year-old Palestinian American has been advocating to Washington insiders on behalf of Americans, particularly Massachusetts residents, with loved ones still in Gaza. As the war drags on, Nabulsi has expanded his focus from US citizens in the strip to noncitizen Gazans with American ties, in addition to pushing for a broader end to the conflict.
“We as the United States need to go as far as we can for our own people,” Nabulsi said from his Boston office earlier this month. “My North Star in all this has just always been shining a light and helping any innocent person, who just doesn’t deserve to be in this circumstance.”
Since Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack, which killed about 1,200 Israelis, the war in Gaza has razed neighborhoods and killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Last week, the United Nations’ top court ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent excess death and destruction but did not call for a cease-fire.
Nabulsi first garnered national media attention with his charge to bring home family friends from Medway who were visiting relatives in the Palestinian territories when war broke out in October. While Abood Okal, his wife, Wafaa Abuzayda, and their young son, Yousef, were stranded in Gaza for nearly a month, Nabulsi coordinated with White House and State Department officials, trying desperately to get them approved to escape to Egypt through the Rafah Border Crossing. His efforts were heavily chronicled in the Globe and, later, the national press.
“I just put everything down,” Nabulsi said. “It had to be done in the moment, and I didn’t know who else was going to do it.”
The Okal family crossed into Egypt on Nov. 2 and returned to Massachusetts soon afterward. Since then, Nabulsi has been inundated with similar requests for help, from Palestinians as near as Canton and as far as Ohio, practically working two full-time jobs.
Though he is a “zealous advocate” in his law practice, Nabulsi said he mostly works in property development and land use, so navigating Capitol Hill was a new challenge. But he said that newness turned out to be an edge — freedom from the limits of what is traditionally considered possible in government.
“What I didn’t know was actually the thing that helped most,” he said. “I didn’t know what was a stupid ask and what wasn’t.”
Nabulsi initially connected with local officials during his efforts to help the Okals, putting in urgent calls and emails and attending community events around Greater Boston. He leveraged his and colleagues’ professional connections to get in contact with staff in Senator Edward J. Markey’s and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s offices, while sending a flurry of emails to anyone in Washington who might be able to help.
On that most recent visit to D.C., Nabulsi met with Warren and Markey from the Massachusetts delegation, as well as Representative Katherine Clark’s national security adviser and staff of Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat.
Warren told the Globe in a phone interview that she first met with Nabulsi to help coordinate the Okal family’s escape.
“But that just opened the door with Sammy,” said Warren, who invited Nabulsi to her home for tea as “a chance to get to know Sammy personally, and to hear more about what he sees happening in Gaza.”
Their conversations “evolved into work over how the Senate is exercising its constitutional responsibility for oversight of our military and humanitarian aid,” Warren said.
Nabulsi most recently spoke to Warren and Markey about a resolution proposed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, which would have prompted the State Department to draft a report on whether Israel may have committed human rights violations in its war against Hamas.
The proposal, based on the Foreign Assistance Act’s little-used section 502B, would have tied Israel’s eligibility for additional military assistance to the findings of that report. Nabulsi saw it as a way to bolster congressional oversight of aid and “to have that conversation” about human rights.
Warren and Markey both voted in favor, joining just nine other senators in support of the resolution, which was shot down by a vote of 72-11.
Though Sanders’ proposal failed, Nabulsi called that demonstration of support from the Massachusetts delegation invaluable.
Markey said members of Boston’s legal community, like Nabulsi, have been extremely helpful over the last three months.
“[M]y office and I continue to meet with active and engaged community leaders and voices, such as Sammy Nabulsi, whose public and private advocacy for the safe return of Massachusetts constituents from Gaza, releasing hostages held by Hamas, and aid to address the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground have been vital,” Markey said in a statement.
Between Capitol Hill meetings, Nabulsi was still fielding phone calls from stateside Palestinian Americans, terrified for their friends and family trapped in Gaza.
In recent weeks, he has been working to get those without US citizenship onto the State Department’s exit list. That list is then vetted by Egyptian and Israeli officials, who can make cuts, before being passed to the border authority, he said.
“This phase has been the most frustrating part,” he said. “The success rate has been really low, because the State Department, they have this rigid policy on who they’re willing to assist.”
A spokesperson said the State Department is working with Egypt and Israel toward safe passage for citizens, lawful permanent residents, and their immediate family members, which includes spouses as well as unmarried children and siblings under 21.
“This is a fluid and quickly evolving situation,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
Tariq Siyam, a Palestinian American lawyer who works mostly in finance, joined Nabulsi on his last trip to D.C. Siyam said the two of them are “trying to understand this as we go.” Neither comes from a background in politics or lobbying, he noted.
The two first met at a vigil in October, he said, having both been in contact with representatives on Capitol and Beacon hills. “We literally developed this relationship on, really, grief,” Siyam said.
In the weeks since, Siyam said they have grown closer to one another and become “more strategic” with their advocacy.
“It’s really just about relationship building,” he said. “Our time, our resources are best spent having these conversations behind the scenes and trying to empower the representatives as best as possible.”
Settling into the chair of his downtown office, Nabulsi sighed and said he was still “working on” a way to balance his day job and his advocacy, which he said takes up most of his nights.
After leaving the office, he usually goes home for dinner and a moment with his two children before making calls and emails “until I pass out, frankly.”
Though fleeting, he said those moments with his children, 3 and 6 years old, keep him motivated.
“My kids’ names are Kenza and Naji. There are kids dying in Gaza right now daily, whose names might also be Kenza and Naji,” Nabulsi said, removing his glasses to wipe tears. “You see your kids in these kids. That’s it. That’s all I need to see.”
Daniel Kool can be reached at daniel.kool@globe.com. Follow him @dekool01.