UK Gaza Families Blocked Despite Resettlement Reopening
Britain’s newly reopened refugee resettlement programme offers no route for Palestinians in Gaza trying to join close family in the United Kingdom, Al Jazeera reported on October 20, 2026.
Lawyers and rights groups estimate that between 250 and 300 people are using the courts to try to bring immediate family members from Gaza to Britain. On September 30, the Upper Tribunal, a court that reviews immigration and asylum appeals, ruled that a group of those families should be reunited in the UK.
The Home Office, the government department responsible for immigration, is appealing that ruling. It is also refusing to waive a requirement for the families in Gaza to provide biometrics, such as fingerprints and photographs used to confirm identity.
That requirement is difficult to meet because Gaza’s visa application centre, where such checks were registered, has been closed since October 2023. Without an open centre in Gaza, applicants have no local place to complete the step.
The same report said the government has applied more flexible biometric rules in other cases from Gaza. It cited medical evacuations and a programme in which scholarship students were helped to leave Gaza to complete biometric checks in Jordan.
The family cases arise after the government suspended new applications under the refugee family reunion route on September 4, 2025. That route had allowed people with refugee status, humanitarian protection or discretionary leave to apply for family members to join them and settle in Britain. The suspension was part of a broader tightening of immigration policy as the ruling Labour Party faced pressure from the hard-right Reform UK party, according to Al Jazeera.
The government later reopened the separate UK Resettlement Scheme for new referrals, with around a quarter of referrals expected to be Afghan women and girls, the government said. Between 2010 and March 2026, Britain resettled just over 36,000 people through resettlement schemes run with the UN refugee agency UNHCR, according to official statistics.
Legal challenges to the limits on family reunion are continuing. Safe Passage International began proceedings against the Home Office over the suspension of the scheme, and on October 4 The Guardian reported that a court had quashed a Home Office decision blocking mothers and children in Gaza from joining families in Britain. Written evidence published on the UK Parliament committees website has called for a dedicated family reunification scheme for Gazans seeking to join relatives in the UK.
Decla Palmer, a solicitor at the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit who represents the families, told Al Jazeera that holding children and keeping them safe is the most basic wish of any parent and that the fathers in Britain face the prospect that they may never hold their children again.
