A woman pleads with bureaucrats for a path out of Gaza for her husband

After a year and a half of waiting – and days after bombs destroyed his home and small shop in Gaza City – the Department of Justice finally gave Abdallah Musleh a visa to visit his wife and children in Ireland.

He has managed to renew his expired passport, too, despite the total destruction wrought on the strip. But he still can’t leave.

To have a shot, the Department of Foreign Affairs, through its embassy in Tel Aviv, has to put his name on an exit list alongside those who aren’t from there and those related to others who hold citizenships elsewhere, says his wife Nada.

Embassy workers told her on the phone that it couldn’t because she was not an Irish citizen, she says.

On Monday morning, a staffer at the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv emailed Nada to say that “Regrettably, it is not possible to include “X” on the coordination list at this time.” Only foreign nationals can be put on the list, they said.

Not only that but even if the embassy put Abdallah’s name on the exit list, that doesn’t mean he will be able to get out. Other “relevant authorities” have the final call and might not approve it, says the email.

Nada says that excluding Abdallah because other officials might veto him doesn’t make sense. It’s worth giving him a shot anyway,  she said.

It is unclear how many others may be in a similar situation to Abdallah.

A statement from Tánaiste Micheál Martin posted online on Friday gave an update on the evacuation of Irish citizens and their families, and called for the release of captives and a ceasefire.

But it didn’t mention other Gazans with family members in Ireland, those living here who may not yet be citizens.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs didn’t respond to a query asking about cases like Abdallah’s. “The Department does not comment on the detail of individual cases,” they said.

Degrees of separation

While Abdallah was waiting for his visa application, filed a year and a half ago, to be processed, his passport expired.

The Department of Justice later told the family’s lawyer that Abdallah had to physically show up at the Irish embassy in Cairo to get an Irish travel document to use instead of a passport, said his wife, Nada, on Thursday.

But that wasn’t an option.

Instead, Abdallah, who is sheltering somewhere in the south in the enclave at the moment, managed to renew his passport by sending it to the West Bank.

There, government workers sent the new passport to Dublin through a courier, where staffers at the Burgh Quay immigration office pasted a visa on one of its pages.

Then, Nada shipped it back to Egypt, where a UN worker will take it to Abdallah in Gaza. “His passport actually travelled the world,” said Nada.

Abdallah is among a handful of people in Gaza who have applied for visas to join family in Ireland, according to government figures.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said on 6 November that, not counting kids, it had approved seven such visa applications.

Fewer than five applications were still being processed, they said at the time. “These applications will be dealt with speedily.”

This number may have climbed a little as the conflict persists.

Albert Llussà, partner and solicitor at the law firm Daly Lynch Crowe and Morris, said on Sunday that he had applied for a resident of Gaza, a 26-year-old woman, on 15 November. The woman’s brother is an Irish citizen.

But Llussà said he worries that the government will reject the application, arguing that an adult sibling doesn’t count as a dependent even though she is forced to leave because of the conflict. “That’s the worry.”

The Israel-Gaza conflict has not triggered the European Union’s temporary protection directive to shelter those fleeing, as the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine did.

Meanwhile, Nada goes days without hearing Abdallah’s voice. She works for the UN and asks her colleagues on the ground to search for him and report back. They do, often days later, as she waits and worries.

“They would tell me, three, four days later that, ‘Listen, we got access, he’s still alive’,” she says.

Abdallah’s phone is mainly off-grid. Dialling his number again and again last week and into Monday led only to a recording that said, in Arabic and in English: “The number you’re calling is currently unreachable. Please try again later.”

Making the cut

It’s unclear if, and how, the government plans to help Irish residents with family in Gaza who’ve been granted visas.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs didn’t say. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said on Friday that it’s working closely with the Department of Foreign Affairs to evacuate Irish citizens.

It doesn’t comment on individual cases, they said.

Nada says if Abdallah’s name gets on the departure list, Israeli and Egyptian officials probably couldn’t tell he wasn’t joining an Irish citizen in Ireland.

“His visa is a join spouse visa, the type, so nobody would even know that I’m not an Irish citizen,” she says.

It doesn’t say anywhere on the visa that Nada is an Irish resident and not a citizen. It’s valid until 17 February 2024.

Green Party TD Neasa Hourigan said on Monday that it’s baffling that Abdallah couldn’t get on the list even though he had a visa.

“I would urge both the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv and the department to reconsider their position,” she said.

Nada says she told staff at the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv that she understands that they’re not citizens and not prioritised, but they are afraid of losing Abdallah.

“Because no one is safe in Gaza,” she says.

On Monday, Gaza’s government media office said that more than 13,000 people, including over 5,500 children and 3,5oo women, have been killed since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing 1,200 people, including children, and taking an estimated 240 people hostage.

Gaza officials have said that Israeli attacks have wounded more than 30,000 and displaced a million and a half.

On Sunday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed concern that the agency’s shelters in the Gaza Strip have been targeted in airstrikes.

Too late

Nada says she kept reassuring embassy workers in Tel Aviv that she and Abdallah wouldn’t apply for asylum if they helped him join his family.

“That we will be sticking to our initial agreement, that I’m here as a PhD student,” she said.

That after she wraps up her studies, she would search for a job and apply for a work permit even if they would qualify for refugee status. “I’ve respected my part of the deal for years now.”

If it weren’t for the delays on his visa decision, Abdallah would have been here long before the recent round of conflict, said Nada.

“But they kept on delaying and delaying and delaying until, you know, a catastrophe has happened,” she says.

Fiona Hurley, CEO of migrant-rights non-profit NASC, said wars and crises often illuminate how consequential processing delays can be. “Backlogs can lead to people being left in life-threatening environments.”

If Abdallah gets killed, Nada said, she will never forgive herself for leaving him alone in Gaza. “It is my fault. It is completely my fault,” she said, crying.