A French tribunal for asylum seekers on Friday approved the residency of a Gaza woman and her son based on their alleged displacement by Israel, setting a legal precedent that some fear would trigger mass immigration, but which others downplayed.
The significance of Friday’s ruling by the tribunal—the Cour nationale du droit d’asile (CNDA)—is that for the first time, refugee status was granted to a Gazan who was not under the protection of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Le Figaro reported.
Before the ruling, Palestinians fleeing Gaza who were not covered by UNRWA’s definitions—a segment that accounts for roughly 20% of Gaza’s population—were only eligible for subsidiary protection in France, not full refugee status, the newspaper reported. The court said the mother and son were persecuted “for their nationality” by Israel, and were therefore eligible for an asylum status created in 2003.
The ruling provoked the ire of many opposed to immigration in general and from Muslim countries especially, who warned the ruling could open France up to some 200,000 Gazans who are not covered by UNRWA and may now claim asylum based on Friday’s precedent.
But others disputed this, including Pascal Markowicz, a French jurist who is also a member of the steering committee of the CRIF umbrella group of French-Jewish communities.
“The ruling doesn’t necessarily signify an opening for mass migration,” Markowicz told JNS, explaining tribunals assess applications on a per-case basis that takes into account the level of risk each individual applicant is exposed to, and that this mitigates judicial dependency on precedents.
Eric Zemmour, a French-Jewish right-wing politician, on Sunday warned in an op-ed in Le Figaro that the ruling meant “millions more Muslim whom no Muslim country wants” would be coming to France.
Many thousands of Palestinians reside in France. Throughout most of last year, Palestinians accounted for a small fraction of people who filed for asylum in France: Fewer than 200 out of 142,000 who applied in the first nine months of 2024, according to Le Monde, which cited data from the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA.)
