All Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip will be eligible for the first time to apply for asylum in France, a court ruled on Friday.
Deciding on a case brought by a Palestinian mother seeking asylum in the wake of the Islamist Hamas October 7th terror attacks on Israel, France’s National Court of Asylum (CNDA) ruled in her favour given the “war methods” of the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza, which the court found were “serious enough to be regarded as methods of persecution.”
The decision overturned a previous rejection from the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Effrusion (OFPRA) in November, which noted that the Palestinian woman was not specifically being “persecuted” and therefore could only be eligible for “subsidiary protection”, a lesser form of asylum which only allows for a four-year temporary residence permit rather than the ten years of protection guaranteed to refugees.
The case paved the way for the CNDA to declare that all Palestinians living in Gaza should be entitled to asylum protection in France, Le Figaro reports. The court based its decision on the Geneva Convention, which says that people who face “persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion,” should be considered refugees.
The court specifically cited the supposed persecution based on “nationality” faced by Palestinians in Gaza, despite France, like most other nations, not recognising Palestine as a state.
Nevertheless, the judges said that they possessed the “characteristics” of a nationality, which according to the Convention include belonging to a “group determined by its cultural, ethnic or linguistic identity, common geographical or political origins or its relationship with the population of another state.”
While the ruling is novel in declaring such “persecution” of Palestinians, legal experts noted that it would likely only impact around 20 per cent of the population of Gaza, given that 80 per cent were already classified as being refugees by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and were therefore already eligible for protection in France.
Although the ruling was hailed by leftist groups such as Amnesty International, others expressed concern about allowing more Palestinians into France, including a former Muslim turned anti-Islamist activist and female rights campaigner, Henda Ayari.
“While France is already grappling with explosive community tensions, it chooses today to unconditionally welcome refugees from Gaza, even though more than 30 Muslim countries refuse to take them in. Why should France, once again, play the role of humanitarian substitute while others categorically refuse to host these populations in their countries?” she questioned.
“We’re talking about a region where Hamas recruits, where Islamist ideology and anti-Semitic, anti-Western hatred are deeply rooted, where many celebrated the massacres of October 7. We cannot pretend to believe that they are all ‘innocent victims.’ Some of these individuals who will arrive in France may have participated in, supported, or condoned terrorism. And tomorrow? They will be housed, fed, and supported at the expense of French taxpayers… while our retirees are dying and our neighbourhoods are exploding,” Ayari lamented.
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