LONDON: A Palestinian family of six who are stuck in Gaza despite having permission to join a relative in Britain asked London’s High Court on Wednesday to make officials reconsider their refusal to ask Israel for help to leave the enclave.
Lawyers representing a Palestinian couple and their four children said the family were given leave to enter the United Kingdom to join the family member, who is a British citizen.
A London tribunal ruled earlier this year that the family should be permitted to enter the UK, in a decision which was publicly criticized by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and opposition leader Kemi Badenoch in February.
But the family’s lawyers say Britain’s foreign ministry is refusing to provide assistance because it will not ask Israel whether the family can leave Gaza to provide the biometric data needed to travel to Britain, as there is no operating visa center in Gaza.
Tim Owen, a lawyer representing the family, said they were asking the High Court to order the foreign office to reconsider its decision.
Owen said in court filings that three of the family’s four children had recently been fired upon when attempting to access aid, with one of the children also having been struck in the wrist by shrapnel from a tank shell.
He told the court that there was a “consular-level process which has been established by Israel” in order to evacuate people from Gaza, but that the foreign office “have not even made the request.”
The foreign office, however, says evacuating citizens from Gaza is incredibly complex and that Britain can only offer support in exceptional circumstances.
The department’s lawyer Julian Milford told the court that the foreign office was aware of 10 people in Gaza with unconditional leave to enter Britain and a further 28 with permission, subject to biometric checks.
Milford cited evidence from a department official urging caution over the “expenditure of political and diplomatic capital with Israel and others” in relation to such cases.
The family’s lawyers say they were, like nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million population, displaced by the conflict which began with a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory war has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, Gaza’s health ministry says, and reduced much of Gaza to rubble. (Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Alison Williams)
Palestinian family in Gaza ask UK court for help to join relative
https://arab.news/8vnmw
Palestinian family in Gaza ask UK court for help to join relative
- Family of six have been granted leave to join relative in UK
- Lawyers say three children fired upon when accessing aid
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
