Over 1,200 Palestinians are seeking asylum in Germany, but their applications are not being processed. An aid campaign for injured children from Gaza also remains unsuccessful. Seven of them have now died.
German asylum authorities are currently not deciding on asylum applications from most refugees from Palestine and are making use of a paragraph in the Asylum Act. According to this, asylum decisions from areas with a “temporarily uncertain situation” can be postponed. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees is now referring to such a “persistent military situation” for the entire Gaza Strip region.
The information comes from a written question from Bundestag member Clara Bünger, which the Federal Ministry of the Interior (MoI) answered. The Left Party politician also wanted to know how many Palestinians have applied for asylum. This number is increasing slowly but steadily. In January, the Office for Migration and Refugees recorded 1019 applicants, in June there were a total of 1244.
According to the ministry, applications for the granting of family asylum and international protection for family members are exempt from non-processing. So-called inadmissibility decisions, in which the authority determines that other EU member states are responsible for the asylum application, are also still being dealt with.
“There has been war and displacement in Gaza for nine months,” says Bünger, criticising the behaviour of the Office. The postponement of asylum decisions is therefore “a mockery” and “verges on a refusal to work”, said the MP. “The living conditions on the ground are only getting worse by the day and there is no prospect of being able to live in Gaza in the coming years.”
“At least 70 per cent of the housing in Gaza and 80 per cent of its schools have been damaged or destroyed,” says Riad Othman, Middle East consultant at medico international. The Frankfurt-based aid and human rights organisation itself supports projects run by partners in the Gaza Strip.
“The situation is clearly catastrophic and this will not change in the foreseeable future,” says Wiebke Judith, legal policy spokesperson for Pro Asyl, when asked by “nd”. The persistent failure to process asylum applications from people from Gaza is therefore “unjustifiable”. Those affected are forced to file a complaint after six months in the asylum procedure due to inactivity, explains Judith.
However, according to the MoI, the German Migration Office is unable to distinguish in its statistics how many of the Palestinians seeking asylum in Germany have actually lived in Gaza. As the borders of the strip are strictly controlled by Israel and Egypt hardly allows any refugees to enter, most of them are likely to come from the West Bank. One of the escape routes leads from there via Lebanon and Cyprus to the EU.
However, the number of people killed by the Israeli army in the West Bank has also skyrocketed, says Othman from medico international. Because Israel cancelled all work permits for people in the West Bank after 7 October, the unemployment rate in towns such as Tulkarem has risen to over 70 per cent. Israel is also repeatedly using heavy warfare equipment against densely populated areas, including in refugee camps, observes the Frankfurt-based aid organisation.
According to a report by Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), the authorities have also finally prevented an aid operation planned for months to evacuate 32 injured children from Gaza to Germany. More than 40 organisations throughout Germany had promised their support for the treatment of the children, but the Foreign Office and the MoI rejected the project due to security concerns.
The reason given was that the children are in a condition where they could only enter the country with relatives, who in turn might have links to Hamas. In addition, the ministries insisted on clarification of how the patients’ return to the Gaza Strip could be guaranteed before authorisation was granted.
The voluntary medical alliance had already collected donations to cover the costs of flights, treatment and accommodation for the Gaza children injured by Israeli attacks. The organisers were therefore deeply disappointed by the blockade imposed by the authorities. “The result is devastating, we are stunned. We know that seven of the children have since died. One leg had to be amputated, which could probably have been saved in Germany,” BR quotes from an internal letter.
Update (August 8, 2024): The article stated that asylum seekers from the West Bank were also affected by the unprocessed applications, also because the Federal Ministry of the Interior claimed it could not differentiate their origin in its statistics. In response to an inquiry by Clara Bünger, the ministry has now clarified this information: the postponement of proceedings applies “exclusively to asylum procedures for individuals whose usual place of residence is the Gaza Strip.”
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: Settlers and the Israeli military are also making life unbearable in the West Bank (anonymous, West Bank barrier, CC BY-SA 2.5).
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