In an unprecedented ruling, France’s National Asylum Court (CNDA) on July 11 granted asylum status to a Palestinian woman and her son.

The status was granted to them "under the 1951 Geneva Convention due to the methods of warfare used by Israeli forces since the end in March 2025 of the ceasefire," the court said in an official statement.  

The Palestinian woman and her son fled the Gaza Strip shortly after the attacks committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli reprisal that followed. The French Office for the Protection of Refugees (Ofpra) initially refused to grant them the highest form of protection, which would have offered them a residence card for a maximum period of 10 years. Subsidiary protection would have only granted them a residence card for a maximum period of four years. 

A 'well-founded fear of personal persecution'

The CNDA is responsible for examining the appeals of migrants present in France whose asylum demand was rejected by the Ofpra. The court judged that the Palestinian woman and her son faced a "well-founded fear of personal persecution" due to their nationality, should they return to their homeland, by the "Israeli forces which exert control over a substantial portion of the Gaza Strip".

The court noted: "The methods of war employed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip have resulted in a significant number of civilian casualties and injuries, the majority of who are women and children, large-scale destruction of infrastructure essential to the civilian population, such as water and electricity supply and distribution points, hospitals, and schools."

Furthermore, "these operations have led to the forced population displacement of [much of] the population and the obstruction of humanitarian aid, creating a food insecurity crisis for the entire Gazan population."

The CNDA thus judged that "the repeated and grave nature of these acts qualifies them as ‘persecution’ under the European Asylum Directive of December 13, 2011." 

With its decision that it announced Friday, the court judged that all the Palestinian nationals protected by the UN – some 1.6 million Gazans out of 2.4 million– could benefit from refugee status, given the current situation in Gaza. 

'A historic decision'

"We can only welcome this decision, which states that the exceptionally intense conflict (...) endangers all Palestinians just because they are Palestinian," said Maya Lino, one of the applicant's three lawyers, in a statement.

"This only concerns 20 percent of the population of the Gaza Strip from a factual point of view, since approximately 80 percent are refugees who benefit from UNRWA protection and were already eligible for refugee status. Yet this is an important decision: it is the first time that a French court has recognized the 'persecution' of the Gazan population," said another lawyer, contacted by Le Figaro.

The non-governmental organization (NGO) Amnesty International also hailed "a historic decision for Palestinian rights. This legal decision constitutes a major precedent, paving the way for recognition of refugee status in France for all Gazans fleeing persecution by the Israeli occupation forces," the NGO stated in a press release.

"This is a decisive step. France and the member states of the United Nations must now unite to prevent the ongoing crime of genocide, protect the Palestinian nation and put an end to the impunity of the Israeli authorities," added Amnesty International.

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Israel’s retaliatory campaign killed 57,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry. The United Nations considers those figures reliable.

The UN's humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, in a mid-May speech in front of the UN Security Council, told world leaders that they must act to prevent genocide in Gaza.