Nearly all Dutch-linked civilians evacuated from Gaza, Foreign Ministry confirms
Nearly all individuals listed by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs as eligible for evacuation from Gaza have now arrived in the Netherlands, according to the ministry. The group includes around 160 people in total, the ministry said Friday in response to questions from NOS.
These include Dutch passport holders, their immediate family members—defined as parents and minor children—people with Dutch residence permits, and individuals who received a positive family reunification decision from the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND).
“All persons on the Dutch list have been given the opportunity to leave Gaza,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated. “At this moment, only a few eligible individuals remain in Gaza.” Due to privacy concerns, the ministry declined to identify those who are still there.
Most of the individuals who were brought to the Netherlands did so through family reunification procedures. In recent months, the evacuations mainly occurred via the Kerem Shalom border crossing, which lies between Israel, the Gaza Strip, and Egypt.
Once across the border, they were received by staff of the Dutch representation in Ramallah. From there, they were escorted to the Dutch embassy in Amman, the capital of Jordan, the ministry explained. Afterward, they traveled onward to the Netherlands.
One of the evacuees, Abed al-Attar from Almere, had been stuck in Gaza since the outbreak of the war in October 2023. He arrived at Schiphol Airport in February. “I’m going to hug my daughters,” he told NOS at the time.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been working since the beginning of the war in Gaza to extract Dutch nationals and their relatives from the conflict zone. In November 2023, the IND announced it would speed up decisions on family reunification applications from Palestinians in the Netherlands with relatives in Gaza.
According to the refugee advocacy organization Vluchtelingenwerk, the IND did make quicker decisions for a period. However, that accelerated process no longer seems to be in effect. “It’s of course very good news that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has now managed to bring more than 160 people out of Gaza,” a spokesperson for Vluchtelingenwerk said. “But at the same time, dozens of Gazans are still waiting for a decision from the IND on their asylum applications.”
If the IND issues a positive decision on these asylum requests, the individuals are added to the so-called Dutch list, enabling Foreign Affairs to begin the evacuation process. Vluchtelingenwerk argues that procedures for asylum and family reunification for Gazans already in the Netherlands should be expedited.
“We don’t understand why that isn’t happening,” the Vluchtelingenwerk spokesperson said. “These people have already been waiting for more than a year for an IND decision, while their family members are in daily danger from bombings and famine.” According to the organization, the group in question is relatively small and “very likely” to meet the criteria for approval.
The IND confirmed that it no longer handles all asylum and follow-up migration applications from Gazans with priority. “We are now reviewing each case individually,” an IND spokesperson said. “That priority agreement was in place in 2023, when we still had a number of pending applications. Once those were processed, we returned to standard procedures.”
The IND still uses a so-called “red button route,” in which individual cases can receive expedited handling due to compelling circumstances. This includes both asylum and family reunification requests, such as cases involving serious medical conditions or reunification of a terminally ill parent with a child.
The average wait time for processing an asylum application now stands at approximately one and a half years. Long delays in family reunification procedures have reportedly been a persistent issue in the Netherlands for years.
The IND spokesperson emphasized that asylum seekers already reside in the Netherlands during their application process. “In family reunification cases, most family members of status holders are still living under difficult conditions abroad. They are, after all, relatives of refugees already admitted to the Netherlands. Giving priority to one applicant means that another must wait longer for a decision,” the spokesperson said.
There are no reliable figures on the number of asylum and follow-up migration applications from individuals from Gaza, according to the IND. This is because the Netherlands does not recognize Palestinian nationality, meaning people from the Palestinian territories cannot be registered as such.
Instead, refugees from Gaza are classified as “stateless” or of “unknown nationality.” “Because there are many more situations in which foreigners are registered with an unknown nationality or as stateless, we unfortunately cannot say how many individuals from Gaza have applied for asylum in recent years or whether that number has increased since October 2023,” the IND spokesperson said.
Since late 2023, approved family reunification applications involving people from Gaza are passed on individually to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “This means we now have those figures clearly in view,” the spokesperson said.
