Belgium’s Core Cabinet Weighs Fate of 13 Gazan Students

Belgium’s federal core cabinet met on Friday to decide the fate of thirteen Palestinian students and researchers from Gaza who hold valid Belgian study grants and visas but cannot leave the enclave, a politically charged dossier that has split the governing coalition. The case pits Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot’s efforts to organise an evacuation against opposition from the nationalist N-VA and the liberal MR, who warn of a migration “domino effect.”

Speaking on VRT NWS De Ochtend ahead of the meeting, Vooruit faction leader Oskar Seuntjens urged the government to act on principle. “Instead of playing political games at the expense of those thirteen Palestinian students, we should simply do what is right,” he said, according to VRT NWS.

A Dossier Stuck for Months

The students and researchers, several working in fields relevant to Gaza’s reconstruction such as medicine, virology, computer science and infectious-disease research, have been granted places and funding at Belgian universities. Their grants and, in some cases, visas are already in order, but reaching Belgium requires an evacuation that only the federal government can organise and approve.

The dossier has been at a standstill for months. Belgium has facilitated the departure of roughly 1,000 people from Gaza since October 2023, when it restricted evacuation to Belgian nationals, recognised refugees and their immediate families. Around 1,400 to 1,500 Gazans holding valid Belgian visas remain stuck, of whom the thirteen students are a small but symbolically loaded subset.

In May, Prevot told the Chamber that a new evacuation was “not a realistic option” given the unpredictable security situation, and stressed that a visa does not confer an automatic right to state-organised repatriation. Since then, however, an intergovernmental working group has been searching for alternative evacuation scenarios, and the minister has prepared concrete plans.

Coalition Partners at Odds

The core question is not primarily legal but political. Prevot has repeatedly said that launching an evacuation requires unanimity within the government, a diplomatic rule Seuntjens also emphasised: “If evacuations are to take place from Gaza, there must be unanimity within the government. That is a diplomatic law that prescribes it.”

CD&V supports the foreign minister’s approach, while N-VA and MR are opposed. The most explicit objection has come from Asylum and Migration Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt (N-VA), who told VRT NWS De zevende dag that accepting the students risks setting a precedent. “It is proposed that it concerns only thirteen people, but we must not forget the domino effect,” she said, as reported by VRT NWS. “Why would that not apply to people from Yemen or Sudan? Or why not Afghan girls who want to study here?”

Vooruit has framed the issue as a test of consistency. “Vooruit believes strongly in a clear migration policy: strict toward those who are here illegally, but humane toward those who are lawfully entitled,” Seuntjens said. “The minister is doing exactly the opposite. She is focusing on a mere thirteen students who have lawfully received a grant and want to come here to learn, so that they can rebuild Gaza.”

The prime minister, Bart De Wever (N-VA), placed the topic on the core cabinet’s agenda, but his party sits on the restrictive side of the split, alongside the liberal MR chaired by Georges-Louis Bouchez.

Universities and Civil Society Push Back

The students’ case has drawn support from Belgian academia and civil society. Ten university leaders signed a letter to De Wever urging him to help organise a safe departure from Gaza for the Palestinian researchers and students. Rector Herwig Leirs of the University of Antwerp has called the question “simply a matter of political will.”

The vice-rector for external relations at the ULB, Anne Weyembergh, has pointed to France as a comparison, asking why Belgium cannot follow a similar path. The umbrella organisation 11.11.11 has argued that the students hold a legal right to enter Belgium. “It concerns thirteen students who have been invited by a Belgian university and for whom a study grant has been provided,” said Flor Didden of 11.11.11. “In some cases your services issued a visa. They have the right to come to Belgium.”

On the eve of the meeting, roughly 200 people protested outside the Foreign Ministry in Brussels, demanding the evacuation of Gazan families and the students, in a demonstration supported by 11.11.11, the socialist trade union ABVV-FGTB and Vrede vzw.

A Court Ruling Adds Pressure

The political debate has unfolded alongside legal developments. On 10 September, a Brussels court, ruling in summary proceedings, ordered the Belgian State to accept remotely the visa application of Salwa Abu Elhaj, a 23-year-old Gazan student who holds a study grant in Belgium. The ruling may open the door to further individual legal challenges, reinforcing the argument that the holders’ claims rest on more than political discretion.

In an earlier VRT NWS Terzake broadcast, the stranded students described months of limbo, with some waiting two years to reach Belgium.

Analysis: A Test of the Coalition’s Fault Lines

The Gazan students dossier is less about thirteen individuals than about what the Belgian coalition believes it has agreed to. For N-VA, the case sits squarely within its restrictive migration agenda, and Van Bossuyt has made the precedent argument central: a student visa, she notes, obliges the holder to return home, yet she fears some would instead seek family reunification or asylum once in Belgium. For Les Engages, Vooruit and CD&V, the applicants have already passed every legal hurdle Belgium set for them, and refusing to help them leave a war zone is a matter of political will rather than law.

The dispute also carries broader symbolic weight. It has become a concrete human test of the government’s stated positions on the Palestinian question, set against the nationalist migration policy of a governing party, and it is unfolding amid fraught negotiations over a federal budget in which the government must find roughly ten billion euros. According to De Tijd, the fate of the thirteen students has been cutting across those budget talks, adding a further layer of coalition strain.

Operationally, even an approved evacuation would be complex. It would require delicate coordination involving Israel and Egypt, transit through Jordan and charter flights to Europe, all in a volatile security environment. Israel has said publicly, through COGAT, that it supports third-country-requested evacuations of students and researchers from Gaza, suggesting the principal obstacles are political rather than logistical.

What’s Next

No outcome from Friday’s core cabinet meeting had been reported at the time of writing. Three paths appear open: a limited, one-off evacuation of the thirteen, a refusal, or a deferral that leaves the students in limbo. Even if approved, a practical evacuation would take considerable time to arrange.

The deeper question remains unresolved: whether helping thirteen lawful visa-holders becomes a template for the roughly 1,500 others in the same position, which is the crux of the N-VA and MR objection. The Salwa Abu Elhaj ruling may meanwhile invite more individual court challenges, and the French precedent of broadening evacuation criteria will continue to be invoked by the students’ supporters.

For now, the students’ fate rests with a government whose partners disagree not on the facts but on what those facts require. As Seuntjens put it, the time for decisive action has arrived: “The decision cannot be easy, but it must be taken.”