Gaza Palestinian family given lifeline by court to come to Britain

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LONDON (Reuters) -A Palestinian family who are stuck in Gaza despite having permission to join a relative in Britain were given a lifeline on Monday as London’s High Court ruled that officials must reconsider their refusal to ask Israel to let them leave.

The Palestinian couple and their four children were given permission to enter the United Kingdom to join their relative, a British citizen, earlier this year. Gaza has been under attack by Israel since October 2023 and is now in the depths of a humanitarian catastrophe bordering on famine, according to aid agencies.

To get their visas, the family need to travel across Israel to Jordan to provide biometric data – but Israel will only give permission to leave at the request of another state.

The Foreign Office argued that Britain can offer such support only in exceptional circumstances and urged caution over “expenditure of political and diplomatic capital”.

But Judge Martin Chamberlain ruled on Monday that officials had failed to consider whether having the right to enter the UK constituted an exceptional circumstance. The Foreign Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jenni Whitaker, a lawyer representing the family, said they hoped the foreign ministry would now “do the right, just and humane thing and urgently agree to assist our clients”.

The U.N. relief agency UNRWA estimates that more than 1,000 people have been reported killed while trying to get food aid in Gaza since the end of May.

The family’s lawyers told a hearing this month that three of the four children involved in the case had been shot at in this situation.

Israeli forces have killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians in airstrikes, shelling and shooting since launching their assault on Gaza in response to attacks on Israel by the Hamas group that killed 1,200 people and captured 251 hostages in October 2023.

(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Kevin Liffey)