Dozens of Palestinian women and children remain trapped in Gaza despite the British Foreign Office stating it is prepared to evacuate them, according to a report in The Guardian, which found the Home Office is actively working to prevent their arrival in Britain.

The Home Office suspended refugee family reunion applications last September, promising stricter replacement rules by the spring. Nearly a year on, no new framework has appeared, and the suspension remains in place. Families who applied before the freeze, hoping to join relatives already settled in the UK, have been left in bureaucratic limbo even though their applications were technically accepted for processing.

Willing at one end, resistant at the other

Evacuations from Gaza do take place via Jordan for those with a legal right to leave. But the Home Office has withheld the onward travel assurance families need to continue to the UK, and has reportedly mounted legal challenges to prevent reunification — at times fielding several senior barristers against a single case.

This is despite the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office confirming its willingness to carry out the evacuations, and despite Belgium, France, Italy, and Ireland already facilitating comparable transfers for families resident in those countries.

Lawyers acting for the families argue that Palestinian applicants face harsher scrutiny than refugees from other conflict zones. In some cases, officials have cited the fact that applicants — including young children — come from “a territory where terrorists operate” as grounds for concern.

‘Compelling circumstances’

The Guardian reported the case of PhD student Bassem Abudagga, whose family’s evacuation has been agreed by the Foreign Office, yet who has been told by the Home Office that no decision on an onward travel assurance will come before December. When his lawyers described the unsanitary, infested conditions his relatives are living in and the bombardment they face, officials replied that such conditions alone do not meet the threshold of “compelling circumstances.”

Another Palestinian refugee in Britain remains separated from his wife, his three children, and an orphaned teenage nephew the family had adopted. He said the government had promised to help his family and then abandoned them, asking how a mother and her children could be regarded as a security threat.

Sarah Crowe, a solicitor at Leigh Day representing several of the families, said the government had abandoned vulnerable families in Gaza after promising assistance, and that the Home Office was blocking reunification even as the Foreign Office stood ready and willing to evacuate them.

A Home Office spokesperson defended the freeze, saying the reforms mean family reunion will no longer be automatic and that applicants must meet tougher criteria in future.

Reference: Al-Mayadeen

The Israeli newspaper Maariv has likened Israel’s condition in the summer of 2026 to that of a patient in intensive care, citing widening internal divisions, military exhaustion, and compounding security, social, and economic crises as serious threats to the country’s future.

Were an X-ray of Israel to be taken, the paper wrote in an analytical report, the result would be “a horrifying picture of a state of emergency.”

Millions of Israelis, it said, are living with uncertainty and anxiety about what lies ahead, still fearing the possibility of an Iranian attack and the Israeli military response that would follow — a condition that has disrupted ordinary life and weighed heavily on businesses and economic activity.

A society turning on itself

Maariv described a deep social and political rift, writing that Israeli society has fractured into hostile groups and factions amid a spreading wave of internal hatred, crime, and violence. The rise in killings and general insecurity, it argued, means internal threats have become as dangerous as external ones.

The paper was equally stark about the military, describing the army as worn out and exhausted, with forces on alert along every border even as their capability and readiness have severely deteriorated.

Blame, and a warning about elections

Maariv accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of irresponsibility, arguing that the policies of recent years have brought the country to a condition whose effects are now plainly visible.

It closed with a warning that holding elections in the present atmosphere could deepen the divisions further, calling instead for a halt to tension-generating processes and a focus on resolving the crises facing the army, the economy, education, health, and society.

Israel’s survival in the face of regional threats, the paper concluded, requires a united and capable society — something that, by its own assessment, appears more distant now than ever.

Reference: ABNA24