More than 30 students from Gaza were evacuated to the UK this week to begin degrees at universities across the UK.
Of the cohort, all have full scholarships, with some now going on to Glasgow and Edinburgh.
This first wave of students is the result of months of campaigning from associations such as the National Union of Students, which called on the UK government to “grant their visas and ensure safe passage” to over 80 Palestinian students who had university offers but no way of leaving Gaza.
For students set to enrol at the University of Edinburgh, Vice Principal Students, Professor Colm Harmon told The Student: “This marks an important and hard-earned milestone” and the University “is committed to supporting students and academics who require urgent support when facing discrimination, persecution, violence or conflict.”
Despite the apparent success of these first 34 arrivals, and an estimated 40 more students to come, scholars such as Manar al-Houbi, who received a PhD offer from Glasgow University, were told by the UK Foreign Office not to bring their family “only days before our evacuation.”
Manar is now one of five parents forced to decline their university offers in refusal to leave their children behind.
Scottish Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth condemned these government restrictions, saying Holyrood “cannot comprehend why these families are not being allowed to travel and stay together in safety in the UK… given the horrors that these people have endured, there is a moral imperative that this ask is honoured.”
When Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy was interviewed on Sunday by the BBC, he emphasised that evacuation allowances were “dependent on Israeli permissions to bring people out and that has not been easy to get” and that the government does not intend to cause any “further pain or hardship.”
In attendance at an Edinburgh University Justice for Palestine Society’s protest on Wednesday, one student commented, “The Foreign Office should be doing far more to help scholars bring their children to the UK, instead of causing more devastation by forcing a choice between family and education.”
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