The national court of asylum said this Friday that Israeli “war methods” were “sufficiently serious” to be qualified as “persecution”. So far, only the Palestinians already protected by UNRWA could obtain the status.
For the first time in France, a national from the Gaza Strip was attributed the status of “Refugee” by the national court of asylum law (CNDA).
Seizure of the case of a Gazaouie mother who fled the Palestinian territory a few days after the attacks of October 7, the judicial institution considered that the “War methods” Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip were “Serious enough to be regarded as methods of persecution”giving the right to the status of refugee, according to the Geneva Convention of 1951.
Pass advertising
“Persecution due to nationality”
She thus went against the decision taken by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Effrusion (OFPRA) last November. The office had at the time estimated that the applicant was not personally “Persecuted”while recognizing a “Conflict of exceptional intensity” in Gaza, granting him a “Subsidiary protection”a less protective asylum form, giving the right to a four -year resident card instead of ten for refugee status.
After recalling that Israel controlled “A substantial part of the territory of the Gaza Strip”the CNDA spoke about the “Significant number of victims and civilians, including a majority of women and children”the “Large -scale destruction of infrastructure essential to the civilian population, such as points of supply and distribution of water and electricity, hospitals or schools and forced people’s travel” and “Blocking to the delivery of humanitarian aid” creating a “Level of food insecurity crisis for the entire Gazaouie population”. A situation which makes its inhabitants eligible for the status of refugee, according to the court.
The judges decided to retain the “Persecution due to nationality”One of the five reasons for protection according to the Geneva Convention, although there is no official Palestinian state. “The court judges that the Palestinian stateless Gaza have the characteristics linked to a” nationality “which, in the sense and for the application of article 1isA, 2 of the Geneva Convention, covers “belonging to a group welded by its cultural, ethnic or linguistic identity, its common geographic or political origins, or its relationship with the population of another State” ”indicates the judgment. The status was therefore granted to the applicant as well as to her minor son.
Until now, only the Palestinians arrived in Gaza Post 1948, at the time of the Israeli-Arab conflict, have been able to obtain refugee status in Europe. For this, they must justify having to leave the protection of the UN in the territory, provided by UNRWA (the United Nations Rescue and Work Office for Palestine refugees in the Middle East), for reasons “Imperial”, According to the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union. For the others, the OFPRA and the CNDA have never only granted subsidiary protection, created in 2003, especially for foreigners do not “Not fulfilling the conditions for granting refugee status”but exposing in their country to blind violence.