World
• Analysis
Gaza refugee safe route limited to those already in Jordan or Lebanon
The Home Office is accused of giving false hope to people in Gaza over a new gaza refugee safe route, after it emerged that the UK Palestinian resettlement scheme will only accept refugees who have already fled to Lebanon or Jordan.
By Haut Monde Post
• October 10, 2026
• 4 Min Read
The UK's reopened resettlement scheme for Palestinian refugees will be open only to those who have already fled Gaza, according to details that emerged after the route was announced. Campaigners say the Home Office created false hope by failing to make the restriction clear, leaving people inside Gaza to believe they could apply.
What was announced and what it covers
Home secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the reopening of a resettlement scheme for refugees at Labour's annual conference last month. In a statement accompanying the announcement, the Home Office said around one in four referrals would be for Afghan women and girls and Palestinian refugees fleeing war and persecution.
The body administering the scheme has since confirmed it would refer only a very small number of extremely urgent cases, all of which would be processed in Jordan and Lebanon.
The Home Office said the resettlement scheme has always been for people from outside their country of origin. A spokesperson added that Palestinians who remain in Gaza would not initially be in scope for these routes, while those who fled could be referred via the International Refugee Assistance Project.
How the eligibility detail emerged
The restriction came to light through an exchange of emails between the umbrella alliance Communities for Palestinians (CFP) and the International Refugee Assistance Project (Irap), which has been tasked with making the referrals.
Irap's website says it will refer a very small number of extremely urgent humanitarian cases to the UK, with those cases referred to it by humanitarian organisations in Jordan and Lebanon, and interviews used to determine which referrals go forward. The programme focuses on extremely vulnerable refugees whose lives have become unsustainable in Jordan or Lebanon.
CFP said the eligibility detail was missing from Mahmood's speech and from subsequent Home Office statements, which led people in Gaza to believe they could apply for the route. Vicky Moller, the group's co-founder, said the announcement had been understood differently.
"People understood that would mean rescuing people from Gaza."
Why Palestinians in Gaza fall outside the scheme
The Home Office position rests on the design of resettlement schemes, which are normally built for refugees who have already left their country of origin. Other UK safe and legal routes have allowed small numbers to enter from their country of origin, including previous schemes for Afghan refugees.
Palestinians occupy a distinct position in the international system: they fall outside the remit of the refugee convention and the UN refugee agency UNHCR, with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, serving instead. Unrwa covers people whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and livelihood in the 1948 conflict. Palestinian refugees live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as second countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
Experts and the unanswered numbers
Jon Featonby, chief policy analyst at the Refugee Council, said ministers should recognise the particular circumstances that meant Palestinians could be refugees while living in their own country. He said the government is right to commit to safe and legal routes, but that warm words must be accompanied by ambition, supporting people in the thousands, not the hundreds, and be accessible to Palestinians wherever they are.
Dr Peter Walsh, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said the route was always going to mean taking Palestinians from neighbouring states such as Egypt, Jordan or Lebanon.
He pointed to the Syrian scheme as a precedent: the roughly 20,000 people resettled to the UK between 2014 and 2021 all came from countries around Syria, and nobody was flown directly from Syria to his knowledge. Bringing people directly out of Gaza would be closer to an emergency evacuation, Walsh said, dependent on Israel and Egypt letting people leave and on the Home Office carrying out security and biometric checks with no visa centre in Gaza.
Irap says it does not know how many people the UK government will accept under the programme, saying that depends on funding and local authorities' capacity. Palestinians who remain in Gaza are not initially in scope for the routes.
