‘Every day could cost lives’: UK government blocks Gaza families’ reunion

When his three-year-old son asks why they cannot be together, his Palestinian father tells him the border is closed.

“He asks me, why don’t you open it?” the father, who requested anonymity, told Al Jazeera. “He thinks I own an airplane. He is always asking me, can you come and take us?”

Separated by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, they speak over WhatsApp whenever the internet connection allows. The father has been granted protection in Britain, while his wife and their two children, remain trapped in a tent in Gaza.

“When I can’t get in touch with my wife, I feel so stressed. I am so scared that something bad has happened to her or the children.”

Sometimes, he goes to the park to clear his head, and sees children playing with their parents.

“My heart hurts when I see that,” he said. “I am incredibly lonely. Without my family it is impossible to enjoy anything. I worry about them all the time.”

This father is not alone.

Lawyers and rights groups estimate there are between 250 and 300 people who are seeking through the courts to have their immediate family join them from Gaza but remain separated.

On September 30 , an Upper Tribunal ruled to reunite the families in the UK, but the Home Office is appealing the decision and is refusing to waive the requirement for the families to provide biometrics, despite there being no registration facility in Gaza.

This is prolonging their separation as Israel continues to bombard the enclave despite a so-called ceasefire agreement in October 2025.

‘They bombed the area next to us’

A second family that spoke to Al Jazeera also requested anonymity.

Earlier this month, shrapnel from an Israeli bomb damaged their home. The mother told Al Jazeera they have since 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 I brought all three children to my body. They were all screaming and crying and I kept telling them everything will be OK.”

Asked what she would like most in the world, her youngest daughter answers: “To go to my baba with my sisters and my mama.”

Decla Palmer, a solicitor at Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit who represents the families, told Al Jazeera: “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”.

“The fathers, in the UK, are facing the prospect that they may never hold their children again.”

The biometric trap

Both families applied before the government suspended new applications under the refugee family reunion route on September 4, 2025.

Their lawyers say the families meet the requirements, but what keeps them apart is a bureaucratic catch-22.

They cannot obtain visas without providing biometrics. But Gaza’s visa application centre, where families would register physical characteristics such as fingerprints, has been closed since October 2023, so they cannot leave Gaza.

More flexible biometric requirements are given for those who need to be medically evacuated from Gaza, while the government has helped scholarship students leave Gaza and complete biometric checks in Jordan.

But lawyers say the Home Office is refusing to provide the same guarantees for separated family members to make that journey, even though they would still have to undergo UK and Israeli security checks.

Palmer said: “The Home Office is actively keeping these families apart, leaving them stranded in Gaza in grave danger.”

“The judge made the right decision in our case, ruling that the Home Office should apply its unsafe journeys policy lawfully to allow the mothers and children we represent, who are eligible to come to the UK under the Immigration Rules, to leave Gaza and reunite in the UK,” Palmer added.

“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.”

No safe and legal route for families inside Gaza

Activists say a dedicated Gaza family scheme could overcome these barriers, pointing to earlier arrangements that allowed eligible Ukrainians to provide biometrics after arriving in Britain.

A petition calling for such a scheme attracted more than 100,000 signatures and was debated in parliament in May 2024. In its December 2023 response, the government said it had no plans for bespoke arrangements, directing people towards existing visa routes.

Lawyers are now calling on the government to remove the obstacles preventing eligible families from reuniting under the existing visa route.

Since Israel closed Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt in May 2024, lawyers say that no family has been reunited through the visa route these families are required to use, despite the UK government adopting a stronger position on Israel under Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

This month, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the reopening of the UK Resettlement Scheme, with the Home Office expecting new referrals to include Palestinian refugees. The news was met with rapturous applause at the Labour Party conference and was initially praised by pro-Palestine groups.

But the umbrella alliance, Communities for Palestinians (CFP), said Mahmood’s speech and subsequent Home Office statements failed to mention a key detail: that the Palestinian programme covers only a small number of exceptionally vulnerable refugees already in Jordan or Lebanon, meaning it does not apply to mothers and children trapped in Gaza.

Lawyers say that the only remaining safe and legal routes to the UK are if a Palestinian is severely injured by Israel and can be medically evacuated, or if they qualify for a student scholarship.

“There is a real contradiction in what we are seeing,” Ghassan Ghaben, senior community advocacy officer at the British Palestinian Committee, told Al Jazeera. “The Home Secretary has recently announced the reopening of the UK Resettlement Scheme, and spoken about creating safe and legal routes for people fleeing persecution. Yet at the same time, the Home Office is continuing to fight against the reunification of Palestinian mothers and young children with their fathers who are already in the UK.”

He says that for these families, the consequences are measured in lives.

“The government needs to stop treating this as an ordinary administrative problem. These are families separated by genocide, and every additional day of delay could cost them their lives.”

At the time of publishing, the Home Office had not responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.