Mohammed wants to know a few things
While one man waits for word of his family in Gaza, Britain's Home Office wants to send him back
Mohammed has some questions. Some are about his family. Are they still alive? If they are, where are they? How are they?
He hasn't talked to them for 25 days now. Last time they talked, his mother, father, brothers and sisters were in Gaza City, his home town; Mohammed was in Belfast.
Mohammed is still in Belfast but Gaza city has become a place only for the dying and the dead. Did his family flee the Israeli advance? To Khan Younis (now also a place marked for the dying and the dead)? To the border with Egypt at Rafah? Did they seek shelter in al-Shifa hospital? Mohammed has no word.
Mohammed’s journey to Belfast took more than three years to complete. To get out of Gaza and into Egypt, then reach Turkey and on into Greece then to Ireland via Belgium took three years. He spent more than two years lingering in Athens with no way of earning a living. “Athens was terrible,” he says. Belgium was worse. No work, no food, no home.
A year and seven months ago, Mohammed reached Ireland, but a part of Ireland where he is at the mercy of the British Home Office, and the Home Office have now decided they want him gone.
Mohammed came to Belfast with a half-decent life in mind, one not strangled by economic blockade and periodic bombardment, but his claim for Humanitarian Protection has been turned down.
The UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees today calls the strip “one of the most dangerous places in the world”. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister Yoav Gallant are on record as stating they will turn Gaza into rubble and “eliminate everything” in it. But the Home Office doesn’t believe Mohammed would be in any danger in Gaza.
Mohammed’s friend Sultan lives in Manchester but is in Belfast because his residency permit got lost in the post. He had to send his permit to the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency so he could book a driving test. That was four months ago. Now, he’s been told it might be in Royal Mail’s Belfast sorting office and he is here to try reclaim it. He can’t complete his university application without it. Can’t work. Life is put on hold.
Sultan waited “a week, maybe 10 days” for confirmation of his right to remain from the Home Office last year, but while Sultan’s father is Palestinian and currently resident in the occupied West Bank, his mother is Ukrainian and Sultan has Ukrainian citizenship. Another friend, Abdalrahman, from Rafah in Gaza, has waited in Belfast for more than a year for a first interview with the Home Office. But Abdalrahman is merely Palestinian.
“What is the difference between us and Ukraine? Is it because they are closer to here? Or is it because we are Arabs and Muslims?” Mohammed wants to know.
At times like this, you notice how those who possess power measure out time for people who have none. Sultan’s four months without a permit. Those 25 days. Mohammed’s mother Sama, his father Mahmoud, his brothers Hasan, Fehid and sisters Feryil, Amal and Douah have said nothing to him for 25 days now. On day 26, he’ll still wait for word of them from a place the United Nations says has “no safe space left” in it.
“Since the war on Gaza started, it’s been liked being trapped in a dream, only watching. How can something like this be allowed to happen? How people are continuing to live there?” Mohammed asks.
“We had a life in Palestine, even in Gaza, even if it was hard, and we just wanted to be allowed to live it. I love my life the same way other people love their lives, so why am I not allowed to live it?”
In Gaza, Mohammed drove a taxi, where he earned around $10 a day. He’d like to drive a taxi in Belfast too, but that would be against the law. Instead, he is doled out six pounds per day to live on.
“What I want is to be free… Is something wrong with that?” asks Mohammed.
Yes, the Home Office has decided, there is something wrong with that. Freedom – freedom to work, to buy a cup of coffee – is not for the likes of Mohammed.
But what are they going to do with this man they have decided is immune from the impact of bomb blasts?
Are they going to smuggle him back into Gaza through one of those tunnels? Get Israel to drop him from a bomber plane over Khan Younis? How about negotiating a humanitarian pause so he can be shuttled quickly through the Rafah crossing to take his place among the condemned? Probably, they’ll wait. Power can afford to take its time.
“No papers. No going back. No word. Just this. Until when?”