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Palestinians to receive priority in new UK refugee resettlement scheme
Afghan women also expected to receive precedence, in announcement leaked hours after news broke of Hamas figure who gained asylum now arrested for alleged terror plot involvement
The Home Secretary has announced that a new UK refugee resettlement route will prioritise Palestinians – hours after a story broke about how Britain had granted asylum to a former Hamas bodyguard, who has recently been arrested on suspicion of his involvement in a terror plot intended to target Jews in Europe.
As reported widely yesterday, Shabana Mahmood is expected to announce the reopening of a resettlement scheme enabling vulnerable refugees from across the world to settle in the UK, with particular priority being given to Palestinians and Afghan women, who together are expected to make up at least a quarter of all those entering the UK under the scheme. Although the scheme will initially be open to hundreds, thousands are expected to be able to use the initiative in coming years. Users will be granted immediate indefinite leave to remain in the UK, widely seen as a fast-track to settlement and then citizenship.
The news came hours after The Sunday Times revealed that under the previous Conservative government, a Hamas official, identified only as “Mr X”, had been able to claim asylum and subsequently citizenship in the UK, despite his past as a bodyguard to the terror group’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, having been publicly known. Hamas was only proscribed in full as a terrorist organisation in the UK a few years later.
As per the Sunday Times, the individual was arrested in central London in November, after Mossad and Germany’s BND, uncovered information about a planned attack on Jewish community centres, Israeli diplomats and pro-Israel demonstrations in Germany and Austria. “Mr X” is accused of being key figure in the terror plot plans, having been accused of transporting weapons to a facility in Vienna.
However, “Mr X” is also awaiting trial for a separate UK criminal case, with The Sunday Times reporting that after his lawyer argued that identifying him in connection to the Germany and Austria terror allegations would prejudice his UK trial, a judge at Westminster Magistrates Court granted him anonymity for a century. Only after the paper questioned the decision was that order changed to enable “Mr X” to be named once the other legal proceedings are finished.
The former Hamas leaders bodyguard was understood to have repeatedly attended demonstrations outside the Israeli embassy in London – and to have used his British passport to visit both Qatar and Turkey, where Hamas has its key international hubs.
“Mr X” is not the only senior Hamas member to have been able to gain asylum in the UK. In late 2023 the Sunday Times reported that Muhammad Sawalha, Hamas’s former leader of military operations in the West Bank, had been living on a council estate in Colindale for a significant period, and that as late as 2019 he had joined a Hamas delegation to Russia.
Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, described the new refugee resettlement initiative showed that “Shabana Mahmood is running scared of Angela Raynor and the Labour left. She is opening up our borders even more in a desperate attempt to appease them.
“Last year saw 85,000 asylum claims and 41,000 illegal immigrants cross the channel. We shouldn’t be shipping in any more migrants or asylum seekers at all, no matter how deserving, until illegal immigration has been reduced to close to zero.”
Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, said: “Andy Burnham’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has just announced a new push to bring even more migrants into Britain from Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories.
“As if this weekend’s revelations about Hamas operatives in our midst wasn’t enough. Now Labour wants to mass import more people under the guise of ‘international obligations’.”
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