Voices: Why can't Palestinian students from Gaza take up their university places in Britain?
Yet, in spite of their achievements, all of these students are currently unable to take up these hard-earned places, because they are unable to leave Gaza. For a number of them, these places have already been deferred from the last academic year, due to the lack of safe exit routes.
One such student, as The Independent previously highlighted, is 22-year-old Dalya Ibrahim Shehada Qeshta. She has been offered a place to study pharmacy at the University of Manchester, while her sister, Dalal, secured a place at the University of Bristol on an aerospace engineering course. Both have family in the UK, but neither can leave Gaza due to physical obstacles and a lack of financial support.
In response, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians – an independent organisation of lawyers, politicians, and academics who aim to protect their rights through the law – signed an open letter with campaign groups of health workers and lawyers, calling for the UK government to take immediate action.
And last week, nearly 5,000 academics, myself included, also campaigned for the Starmer administration to facilitate the safe passage of these students from Gaza to the UK. Among them are over 600 professors, four vice chancellors and deputy vice chancellors, 12 deans, eight fellows of the British Academy, and eight holders of OBEs and MBEs.
The technical issue is two-fold. The UK requires applicants to enrol their biometric data before an application can be processed, yet the UK-authorised biometrics registration centre in Gaza closed in October 2023. While a biometrics deferral protocol was put in place in 2023 for Ukrainians, Palestinian requests for the deferral have encountered a bureaucratic stone wall. Although the government says there are pathways for application, not a single one has been approved, even for scholars with government-issued scholarships.
Moreover, if students do secure these biometric deferrals, which would allow them to do their biometric registration in a third country (for instance, Jordan or Egypt), they cannot leave Gaza. Therefore, the government must facilitate both biometric deferral and a feasible exit path. On August 6, another letter signed by over 100 MPs was sent to Prime Minister Keir Starmer calling for urgent action on this issue.
Notably, the governments of Ireland, Italy, France, Germany, and Belgium have all evacuated students with university degree offers, as part of wider evacuation efforts to provide urgent medical care, particularly to Palestinian children. There is no plausible reason for the UK government not to follow suit.
The profiles and aspirations of a number of these students have already been widely reported. Students who took English language tests, wrote admissions essays, and did virtual interviews under the most horrendous conditions – many from tents and makeshift Wi-Fi hubs – are in limbo as they wait for the UK government to take action.
The IDF has bombed all 11 universities in Gaza, leaving 88,000 students unable to continue their studies. Some of these universities were destroyed entirely; others were taken over as military bases, or centres for the interrogation and torture of detainees. Enabling the continuing education of students is not only vital for the future reconstruction of academic space in Gaza, but for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip as a whole.
Throughout May and June, this issue has been repeatedly discussed in parliament, but so far, there has been no change in the requirements for students in Gaza, and there is still no way out. This is despite the UK government's recent announcement that it intends to facilitate the evacuation of children from Gaza for urgent medical treatment. As of last week, only three children from Gaza have arrived for treatment in the UK.
In 2024, a group of academics and university administrators of Gaza universities issued an appeal for action. Scholasticide – the systematic destruction of educational institutions, as well as the targeted assassination of students and scholars – continues to ravage what is left of Gaza. If the UK government fails to allow the safe passage of these promising scholars, they will remain complicit in the crime of scholasticide.
Over 4,800 UK academics are committed to taking up the call. They share the view of their colleagues in Gaza that education is a fundamental human right.
These are testing times, and the government's position on this matter is a measure of its commitment to universal values of human rights, justice, and equal opportunities. Will it practice what it preaches and facilitate entry for these heroic young scholars, or will it continue to abandon them to the tender mercies of the Israeli war machine?
Avi Shlaim is an emeritus professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and the author of Genocide in Gaza: Israel's Long War on Palestine
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