‘She killed me with her post’: Gaza students caught in Belgium minister’s immigration posturing

Belgium’s immigration minister has gone on the warpath against evacuating 13 students from Gaza, but they might still be flying out despite her anti-Arab and pro-Israel dog-whistling. “We are being asked to turn our rules on student migration around and to send a plane [to Israel or Jordan] to collect the students,” Belgian immigration and asylum minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt told EUobserver on Thursday (10 September) when asked about the potential evacuation. “But we must also consider what that would mean … are we going to send planes everywhere to bring people to Belgium? And if we make an exception for this group, why don’t we do the same for students or other groups from, for example, Sudan, Yemen, or Afghanistan? Those are questions that simply must be asked and answered before we amend our policy,” she said. Van Bossuyt, who is from the rightwing nationalist N-VA party of Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever, also told Belgian daily De Standaard and said on her LinkedIn page the same day that the 13 students would be the thin end of a wedge of needy migrants. “Why is she [Van Bossuyt] using all her power against us? She killed me with her [LinkedIn] post” She spoke ahead of a cabinet meeting in Brussels on Friday to decide their future, after they won scholarships in top Belgian universities against all odds, but needed help to get there, in what became a headline-grabbing story in the small but symbolic country, which hosts the EU institutions. The N-VA and liberal MR party in the ruling coalition are against helping them, while the other three parties in government – the centrist LE and CD&V and the leftwing Vooruit – want to fly them in. Foreign minister Maxime Prévot (LE) has drawn up detailed evacuation plans. The Israeli authority which controls access to Gaza, COGAT, also told EUobserver on Thursday it had no objections to student evacuations and that it approved 98 percent of such requests by foreign embassies. "Israel facilitates and encourages residents of the Gaza Strip to depart for third countries, including for the purpose of pursuing their studies," COGAT said. "The departure of residents from the Gaza Strip is facilitated subject to the submission of a request by a third country willing to receive the resident, and following the completion of security screening," it said. Ahmed Abu Jami, one of the 13 students involved, said from Khan Younis in Gaza on Thursday: "Why is she [Van Bossuyt] using all her power against us? She killed me with her [LinkedIn] post". But a positive outcome was still possible despite the N-VA's posturing, said Dave Sinardet, a politics professor at the VUB university in Brussels. "The N-VA and MR want to ensure the students don't set a precedent for other people seeking to come from Gaza to Belgium, mostly on family reconciliation grounds, of which there are some 400 or 500 cases pending," he said. "So, a compromise in which Belgium lets in these 13 individuals, but the N-VA gets guarantees on other immigration questions could be a solution that lets all sides claim victory on Friday," he added. Van Bossuyt heartless? Van Bossuyt firmly rejected EUobserver's line of questioning that saying No to the students would make her or Belgium "heartless". "No. Belgium is already doing more than its fair share ... The accusation that we are simply abandoning the Palestinians is therefore unfounded," she said. Belgium evacuated the second largest number (some 1,000, on medical grounds) of Palestinians of any EU state since 2023, said Van Bossuyt, and it had processed 53 percent of all EU asylum applications from Gaza in 2024, she added. But a deeper answer to Abu Jami's question "why" she was against helping him shone a less flattering light on Belgian politics. The reason why the N-VA depicted the 13 Arab students as a potential migration crisis was because it was "in contest for votes with the [far-right and racist] Vlaams Belang party," said Sinardet. And Stavros Kelepouris, a political commentator at Belgium's De Morgen newspaper, agreed. "Her [Van Bossuyt's] argument that a million students from other places will suddenly come to Belgium if she lets in these 13 people from Gaza has no basis in reality. They would all have to win scholarships in Belgian universities, to start with - and that's not realistic," he said. "Vlaams Belang has been gaining ground in the last two electoral cycles and N-VA wants to show far-right voters that they're an alternative, because they can get things done to stop immigration," he added. But migration politics aside, the decision on the 13 students was also linked to N-VA and MR's pro-Israel alignment, which made them less keen to support any project that seemed like they were siding with Palestinians, pundits said. Pro-Israel dog-whistle Prévot's Belgian foreign ministry has pushed for EU sanctions on Israel, but it has, so far, failed to convince De Wever's party to recognise Palestine's statehood, in another example of the political schism. "The N-VA has strong ties to the Jewish community in Belgium and has been less critical of Israel. I guess this somehow factors in to their decision on the students," said Kelepouris. Sinardet said: "The fate of these 13 students can also be framed within this wider ideological division on Israel". But as De Wever and his ministers pondered Friday's decision, the 28-year-old Abu Jami from Gaza, who won a master's place at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp (De Wever's home town), told EUobserver that the Belgian leader should look to his own family for moral inspiration. De Wever's son, the 21-year-old Simon, went to study in Japan under the EU's Erasmus programme in August, prompting his father to tour the Asian country in summer in a highly publicised display of fatherly pride. And "the contrast is striking," Abu Jami said: "While a Belgian student can travel to the other side of the world to pursue an Erasmus opportunity, Palestinian scholarship students cannot leave a war-zone to take up the scholarships they have earned."