‘Every day could cost lives’: UK blocks Gaza families’ reunion
A Palestinian father living in Britain watches his three‑year‑old son ask why they cannot be together. “He asks me why you don’t open it,” the father, who asked to remain anonymous, told Al Jazeera. “He thinks I own an airplane. He always asks if I can come and take us.”
Separated by Israel’s war on Gaza, the family talks on WhatsApp whenever a connection is possible. The father has been granted protection in the UK, while his wife and their two children are stuck in a tent in Gaza. “When I can’t reach my wife I feel so stressed. I am scared something bad has happened to her or the children,” he said. He sometimes goes to a park to clear his head and watches other parents with their children, saying, “My heart hurts when I see that. I am incredibly lonely. Without my family it is impossible to enjoy anything. I worry about them all the time.”
He is not alone. Lawyers and rights groups estimate that between 250 and 300 people are trying through the courts to bring their immediate family from Gaza, but remain separated. On 30 September an Upper Tribunal ordered that the families be reunited in the UK. The Home Office has appealed that decision and is refusing to waive the biometric requirement, even though there is no registration facility in Gaza. The impasse prolongs the separation as Israel continues to bomb the enclave despite a cease‑fire announced in October 2025.
A second family, also speaking anonymously, described how shrapnel from an Israeli bomb damaged their home earlier this month. The mother told Al Jazeera they have been displaced again. “Where we are now there is no safety. They bombed the area next to us last night,” she said. “I sat in the corner and held all three children to my body. They were screaming and crying and I kept telling them everything will be OK.” When asked what she would like most in the world, her youngest daughter answered, “To go to my baba with my sisters and my mama.”
Decla Palmer, a solicitor with the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit who represents the families, said, “To hold your children and keep them safe from harm is the most basic wish of any parent. What these families are going through is every parent’s worst nightmare.” She added, “The fathers, in the UK, are facing the prospect that they may never hold their children again.”
Both families applied before the government suspended new applications under the refugee family reunion route on 4 September 2025. Their lawyers argue the families meet the criteria, but a bureaucratic catch‑22 keeps them apart. Visas cannot be issued without biometric data, yet Gaza’s visa application centre, where fingerprints and other details are recorded, has been closed since October 2023, making it impossible for the families to leave Gaza. More flexible biometric procedures are offered to those medically evacuated from Gaza, and the government has helped scholarship students travel to Jordan for biometric checks, but it refuses to extend the same arrangements to separated family members who would still undergo UK and Israeli security screening.
Palmer said, “The Home Office is actively keeping these families apart, leaving them stranded in Gaza in grave danger.” She noted that the judge’s ruling required the Home Office to apply its unsafe journeys policy lawfully so that the mothers and children eligible under the Immigration Rules could leave Gaza and reunite in the UK. “Instead, the Home Office is doing everything possible to delay and to defend its unlawful decisions, taking a policy position that blocks people in Gaza who are eligible to come to the UK from being able to do so,” she added.
Activists argue that a dedicated Gaza family scheme could solve the problem, pointing to earlier arrangements that allowed eligible Ukrainians to provide biometrics after arriving in Britain. A petition calling for such a scheme gathered more than 100,000 signatures and was debated in Parliament in May 2024. In a December 2023 response, the government said it had no plans for bespoke arrangements, directing applicants toward existing visa routes.
Lawyers are now urging the government to remove the obstacles that prevent eligible families from reuniting under the current visa route. Since Israel closed Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt in May 2024, no family has been reunited through that route, even as the UK adopts a stronger stance on Israel under Prime Minister Andy Burnham. This month Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced...