Comment from Robina Qureshi:
What Does the Government Want Palestinian Refugees to Do - Send Shrouds for Their Children?
It is shocking and unforgivable that Yvette Cooper, first as Home Secretary and now as Foreign Secretary, suspended the family reunion route in September 2025 with only a few days’ notice, despite knowing it was one of the few legal ways for the family members of recognised Palestinian refugees in the UK to escape what Holocaust survivors and eminent scholars define as an ongoing genocide.
We literally had to scramble to help Palestinian refugees submit applications before the deadline, while also providing self-help guidance to others trying to do the same. Thankfully, we had already applied for Zakaria’s wife, a qualified pharmacist, and their three sons, who were trying to continue their university and school studies online from their smartphones in Gaza. Little did we know we were walking them into a bureaucratic trap.
I remember when a Home Office official spoke to us last year about the process for biometric deferral. I told her we would pursue this case to the very end. I will never forget the look on her face when she fell silent. At the time, I did not understand it. Looking back, I think she could not bring herself to say what she already knew: that family members in Gaza would never be allowed to leave.
Well, let us see.
It is shocking that a family with a basic human right to be reunited with their husband and father in the UK has been trapped by administrative delay, while he suffers severe mental trauma from separation, knowing his wife and children are living in a tent in Gaza surrounded by bombardment, hunger and total devastation.
A family reunion route that cannot be accessed is not a route at all. It’s a trap. A genteel trap designed to give the appearance of a way out, yet does nothing of the sort.
The worst part is that this family entered a process, still ongoing almost a year later, believing in the British government and the rule of law. Yet the Foreign Office and the Home Secretary, past and present, knew this was a closed loop. The family were being led into a bureaucratic trap created by two government departments: the Home Office and the Foreign Office.Now thanks to the highest civil court in Scotland the Home Office has been ordered to extend the deadline for this family to submit biometrics.
But this does not deal with the tussle we have with the Foreign Office. They are arguing that both Israel and Jordan (and I assume Egypt) demand guarantees from the UK Government that Palestinian refugees traveling to submit biometrics will leave their territory. But the UK Government is refusing to give that guarantee. Why? If the Home Office has predetermined a family member/s as being eligible to enter the UK, but simply require biometrics, to confirm identity of family members of recognised refugees in the UK, why will the UK Government not give that guarantee? If they cannot give guarantees, then conduct mobile biometrics at the border between Gaza and Israel and then evacuate them to Jordan or Egypt for onward travel, which is a guarantee. You did it for thousands of Ukrainians who were allowed to submit biometrics within 240 days of arriving in the UK. At the very least. They should take mobile biometrics or give the guarantee. These family members do not want to stay in Egypt or Jordan. Their families are in the UK.
You may remember that last year the Foreign Office evacuated a cohort of Palestinian students. We are asking for the same to be done for family members of recognised Palestinian refugees in the UK.
Dragging this out for more than two years makes it more likely that family members could be killed or seriously injured at any moment. If their documents are destroyed, there is almost no way out.
What is it like for family members forced to watch all this unfold through a mobile phone screen?
Zakaria says he has become allergic to his mobile phone. At times he talks of returning to Gaza. He dreads night-time calls, fearing they will bring the worst news from thousands of miles away. He says that if his family is ever allowed to come to Glasgow, the first thing he will do is throw his phone away.
He often asks:
“I am a father. What does the government want me to do? Send shrouds to Gaza for my children? What is the point of my life here if they are there? I am like an empty shell without my heart and soul. I have no choice but to comply with this process to the end, but I do not know what that end will be.”
