(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Gaza: My family are trapped in Rafah. We urgently need a UK visa scheme [1] [] Date: 2024-06 For more than six weeks this winter, I lost all contact with my family in Gaza. Having to spend every day not knowing if my loved ones were alive or dead was one of the hardest things I’ve ever experienced – and it brought up trauma from when my brother, sister and their families were killed by an Israeli bomb in 2014. When I finally got back in communication with my family in February, I learned they had been sheltering in a UNRWA school with thousands of others. The conditions they described were horrific. There was no sanitation or hygiene, no food, no blankets. My 26-year-old cousin died in that school from a treatable infection, because there was simply no medicine to help her. My family has since been displaced again, this time to Rafah. At least when they were in the school, there were walls that could have protected them from Israel’s bombardment. Today, they live in a tent, waiting for the next bomb to drop. What will happen to them now that Israel has invaded the city? The only thing that has kept me going throughout the past seven months is the hope that one day we will all one day be reunited. It’s particularly heartbreaking to know that the UK government could easily facilitate a reunion through a Family Visa Scheme – just as it did when it allowed Ukrainians living in the UK to bring their relatives to safety after Russia’s invasion in 2022. Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now Tom Pursglove, the minister for legal migration and the border, made clear that it has no intention of doing so in a parliamentary debate on 13 May. The debate, which came about after more than 100,000 people signed a petition calling for the introduction of a temporary family visa, garnered widespread support from cross-party MPs. Yet Pursglove ultimately chose to stand by the statement the government released in December 2023, which read: “There are no plans to introduce bespoke arrangements for people arriving from the region. Those wishing to come to the UK who currently have no visa can apply under one of the existing visa routes.” This is a disingenuous claim. In order to apply through the so-called ‘existing visa routes’, Palestinians must submit biometrics, which is impossible in Gaza as there is no functional Visa Application Centre. The closest and most viable centres are in Egypt, on the other side of the Rafah crossing. Though Israel’s recent invasion of the crossing has made reaching a centre even more difficult, Palestinians in Gaza whose names were not on the official evacuation list – meaning those who did not have visas for other nations – already had to pay an Egyptian travel company $5,000 (£3,960) per person in ‘coordination fees’ to help them flee into Egypt. This has simply not been an option for most Palestinians. Many families have opted to set up crowdfunders to cover these extortionate costs, while others, like my own, have decided not to do so. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office has the discretion to provide consular assistance to families seeking to travel to the UK to leave Gaza, but it has not extended this support to them. Similarly, the British government has not waived the need for Palestinian nationals to submit biometrics before their arrival in the UK, as it did for Ukrainians between March 2022 and December 2023. In contrast, the British government waived the need for Ukrainian nationals to submit biometrics before their arrival in the UK between March 2022 and December 2023. I am devastated by this lack of action from the country in which I have spent the past five years building my life. When I arrived in 2018 with a scholarship for my Masters, I had no way of knowing that the barriers Israel would put in place for going in and out of Gaza would prevent me from returning. I have witnessed many horrors and wars, but I had never imagined anything like this – what my family is going through is beyond description and devoid of humanity. Every day I think about what a colleague and close friend of mine, who lost his entire family when their home was targeted, said to me: “What we are witnessing is a Palestinian trauma. We will never recover from this. It is not about myself, it is about everyone”. I work in the migration sector in the UK and have seen firsthand the way the government can take action when lives are at stake – issuing visa schemes and protections for Ukrainians. Yet, when it comes to Palestinians, the silence has been deafening. The feeling of helplessness knowing what my family and friends are living through motivated me to be involved in something that could make a difference. Together with other Palestinian families in the UK and volunteers, I formed The Gaza Families Reunited campaign. It made me feel like I had a way to make my voice louder and that we could work towards evacuating our families together. While the government’s response has so far been disappointing, and it sometimes feels like our efforts are in vain, they cannot be. We will continue to advocate and fight for our families. The history books will remember how the UK enabled these atrocities and was complicit in continuing to arm Israel. How British politicians chose to keep the door closed to Palestinians – and ignored the voices of the public they purport to represent. We can only hope the next government will heed our calls to evacuate our families and welcome them to the UK. In the meantime, we can continue to amplify our voices and keep that pressure on politicians. No one should normalise the loss of over 35,000 people. There must be a ceasefire, there must be routes to safety. The UK has a responsibility and a duty to act. We have done it before, we can do it again. It is not impossible. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/gaza-family-reunification-visa-scheme-ukraine-rafah-israel/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/