A French judicial body tasked with hearing appeals from people who have been denied asylum announced on Friday that it believed the Gaza Strip was facing a “situation of indiscriminate violence of exceptional intensity”, paving the way for the protection of Palestinians in the region, AFP reported. .

Most of the Gaza Strip has been reduced to ruins after massive Israeli bombardmentsPhoto: AA/ABACA / Abaca Press / Profimedia

In a decision dated February 12, the National Asylum Tribunal (CNDA) granted asylum to a citizen of Khan Younes on the grounds that if he were to return to the territory and “solely because of his presence as a citizen” he would present “a real risk of being seriously threatened by his life or personality,” the court said in a press release.

The CNDA believes that this is “a consequence of the situation of violence resulting from the armed conflict between the forces of Hamas and the Israeli armed forces, which can indiscriminately extend to civilians, as well as the humanitarian situation.”

This decision by the CNDA, which hears asylum appeals, generally sets a precedent for all similar cases in France.

The court ruled that the man, born in 1991, could not obtain refugee status from Ofpra (the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) because he was not registered with the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA). ).

However, the CNDA granted him another form of asylum protection, an additional protection provided by European law.

The court explains that it based its decision, inter alia, on several UN and WHO publications, which “cover the security incidents, the number of victims and internally displaced persons, as well as the dramatic humanitarian situation that has arisen since October 7, 2023, as a result of fighting between the Hamas forces, which controlled the Palestinian territory of Gaza, and the Israeli armed forces.

In the past, this concept of “indiscriminate violence of exceptional intensity” has been used by the CNDA to provide protection to people in South Darfur in Sudan, the Kabul region of Afghanistan, and conflict zones in Ukraine.

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