By Andrew Rettman

 

BRUSSELS, 26 August. - (ANA) - Belgium’s king and the country’s foreign minister both say they can do no more to evacuate 13 Gaza students to take up the scholarships they won at Belgian universities — yet other European states, led by Italy, have shown it can be done.

 

All it took to get out “several dozen” Gaza students via Jordan was a “limited diplomatic effort”, a Dutch diplomat told EUobserver.

 

And the UK extracted over 100 Gazan students for the 2026/2027 academic year.

 

The group of 13 Gaza students trying to reach Belgium had their hopes raised when the Royal Palace of King Philippe replied to their appeals in July.

 

The palace had hghlighted their case with Belgian foreign minister Maxime Prévot, it said on a page emblazoned with a purple crown letterhead.

 

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But the students’ hopes were dashed on 10 August, when Prévot’s ministry told them there was nothing it could do.

 

“In the current situation, no adjustment of the visa procedure [e.g. to permit online visa applications] can in itself remove the main obstacle: the possibility of actually leaving Gaza,” a Belgian foreign ministry spokesperson told EUobserver on 20 August.

 

"Minister Prévot understands the frustration of the students, but we also have to be honest: Once it becomes possible to make progress again, other particularly vulnerable groups – children, for example – will probably have to be considered first," they added.

 

But for her part, Salwa Abu Elhaj, a 23-year-old from Al-Maghazi in central Gaza, who lives in a refugee tent and who won a master's in communications scholarship at the prestigious KU Leuven university in Brussels, told EUobserver: "We're just asking for a temporary, practical pathway to reach our universities, not permanent immigration."

 

Ahmed Abu Jami, a 28-year-old doctor who won a master's scholarship at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp (Belgium), also said from Gaza: "I'm not saying Belgium should choose to save students instead [of children], but why does it have to be a choice in the first place?".

 

He spoke on a crackly, unstable line, calmly, and in eloquent English in a call on 17 August, shortly after coming off a 30-hour shift in an emergency room in a field hospital, treating casualties of an Israeli airstrike.

 

Abu Elhaj and Abu Jami had won their Belgian places in an open competition with EU applicants against the odds, his testimony showed.

 

"I studied whenever I could, sometimes after long shifts, without electricity, or a proper place to sit down. The internet would disappear, food wasn't always available, and there were days when I was simply too frightened or too tired to think, but somehow I kept going. I had no choice," Abu Jami said.

 

"I was exhausted, but I knew this scholarship could change my life," he said.

 

"I also kept going because this master's course would give me the kind of expertise I need to help rebuild Gaza's health sector after the war," he added.  - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/26 August 2026 - - -