One Department Says Yes, the Other Says No: Gaza Families Left Waiting by the Home Office

The Foreign Office is willing to evacuate them and European states are already doing it — but officials have cited children coming from 'a territory where terrorists operate' as grounds for concern

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