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LONDON: A Palestinian Ph.D student from Gaza who was awarded a University of Glasgow scholarship has described her heartbreak after her family was denied entry to Britain.
Manar Al-Houbi received confirmation of her successful scholarship application in May, The Guardian reported.
Her tuition fees as well as housing and living costs were covered by the tuition and a grant from the Council for At Risk Academics charity.
Al-Houbi completed visa applications for her family, but was told by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office last month that her family would be denied entry to the UK.
The scholarship “felt almost too good to be true,” the Ph.D student said.
Most international students in the UK are forbidden from bringing dependents with them, but full-time Ph.D students — such as Al-Houbi — are exempt from this rule, and can bring family members to Britain.
David Lammy, the deputy prime minister, said in a recent interview with the BBC, referring to Al-Houbi: “It’s important to understand that we are actually dependent on Israeli permissions to bring those people out, and that has not been easy to get.”
Israeli officials, however, have denied preventing Al-Houbi’s exit from Gaza.
She is now living with her family in a tent in Khan Younis. The family home in Rafah was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes during the early stages of the Israel-Hamas war.
“The fact that the UK government hasn’t even bothered to make a request on my family’s behalf is heartbreaking,” Al-Houbi told The Guardian.
Her Ph.D research is set to focus on using media and education to combat anti-women violence and promote peace efforts.
She hopes to return to Gaza after completing the program to teach and launch social programs.
Al-Houbi is “such an excellent candidate for a scholarship that she was able to pick the scheme that allows her to bring dependents,” said Prof. Alison Phipps, academic supervisor at the University of Glasgow.
“No parent should be forced to choose their studies over their family, not least when this is a firm criterion of the scholarship itself.”
An FCDO spokesperson said: “The government is working with universities to identify eligible students and to assist them to leave Gaza and take up their studies in the UK. This has been a highly complex process, but we have already successfully evacuated a number of students and expect further cohorts to arrive in the coming weeks.”
The first group of Palestinian university students from Gaza arrived in Britain last month after a sustained campaign led by academics and rights groups.
The CEO of the charity that awarded Al-Houbi her scholarship grant said his organization “is ready and waiting to support this family and we call on the UK government to support their evacuation immediately.”

MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Sunday Russia was deeply concerned about the possibility of the US supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, warning that the war had reached a dramatic moment with escalation from all sides.
US President Donald Trump said on Monday that before agreeing to provide Tomahawks, he would want to know what Ukraine planned to do with them because he did not want to escalate the war between Russia and Ukraine. He said, however, that he had “sort of made a decision” on the matter.
Tomahawk missiles have a range of 2,500km, meaning Ukraine would be able to use them for long-range strikes deep inside Russia, including Moscow. Some retired variants of Tomahawks can carry a nuclear warhead, according to the US Congressional Research Service.
“The topic of Tomahawks is of extreme concern,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian state television reporter Pavel Zarubin in remarks published on Sunday. “Now is really a very dramatic moment in terms of the fact that tensions are escalating from all sides.”
The war in Ukraine, Europe’s deadliest since World War Two, has sparked the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and Russian officials say they are now in a “hot” conflict with the West.
Peskov said that if Tomahawks were launched at Russia, Moscow would have to take into account that some versions of the missile can carry nuclear warheads.
“Just imagine: a long-range missile is launched and is flying and we know that it could be nuclear. What should the Russian Federation think? Just how should Russia react? Military experts overseas should understand this,” Peskov said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that it was impossible to use Tomahawks without the direct participation of US military personnel and so any supply of such missiles to Ukraine would trigger a “qualitatively new stage of escalation.”
The Financial Times reported on Sunday that the US has been helping Ukraine mount long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities for months. The FT said US intelligence helps Kyiv shape route planning, altitude, timing and mission decisions, enabling Ukraine’s long-range, one-way attack drones to evade Russian air defenses.
Putin portrays the war as a watershed moment in Moscow’s relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine and Georgia.
Ukraine and its allies have cast it as an imperial-style land grab and have repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces.