Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out in October 2023, some Palestinians have fled the conflict zone, with some seeking refuge and asylum in countries in southeast Europe.

Data BIRN has acquired show that Turkey and Greece are among their main destinations in Southeast Europe, due to Turkey’s vocal anti-Israeli position and Greece’s historic ties with the Palestinians.

In 1982, after Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization, Greek ships transferred PLO chief Yasser Arafat to Athens.

Turkey does not issue migration data every month, but it seems likely that the recent conflict prompted more Palestinians to come to Turkey, according to statistics.

According to Turkish data, 18,113 Palestinians were registered as irregular migrants in the country in 2023, nearly three times more than the number in 2022, which was 6,628.

In the first 18 days of January 2024 alone, 515 Palestinians registered as irregular migrants in Turkey.

There are no official statistics on how many of these irregular migrants have received temporary protection or international protection in Turkey.

“Greece has always been a destination country for people from Palestine, especially the islands of Kos and Samos [in the Aegean]. However, after the [October 7] terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel and the conflict that followed, the situation changed,” the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum told BIRN.

As of early October 2023, the number of Palestinian asylum seekers in closed control camps in Greece was 3,000. However, by the end of January 2024, that number had dropped to 2,100.

The majority are young men who crossed the Greek border requesting international protection status.

UNHCR’s last weekly report, covering January 15–21 2023, says 15,859 refugees and migrants are currently in closed controlled access centres in Greece. Most are from Syria (33 per cent) and Afghanistan (33 per cent) with Palestine coming third (13 per cent).

In Serbia, Palestinians rarely apply for asylum. Some express the desire to do so when they enter the country. But Belgrade’s Centre for Human Rights, BCHR, says few ask for asylum officially.

In 2022, 40 Palestinians expressed the desire to apply for asylum in Serbia, but none actually did so. In 2023, 28 Palestinians expressed the desire to apply for asylum. One person applied.

Serbian data from January to October 2023 says nine Palestinians expressed a desire to apply for asylum. In November 2023 alone, however, 19 Palestinians did the same, a sharp rise.

The Ministry of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina said that between October 9, 2023, and January 14, 2024, 73 citizens of Palestine had expressed an intention to seek asylum. Eight actually applied – three men, three women and two children.

From January 2, 2023, to October 8, 2023, 82 citizens of Palestine expressed their intention to seek asylum in Bosnia, according to the Ministry of Security.

Many of them entered Bosnia without personal documents and the police registered them based on personal statements. They have to declare an intention to seek asylum if they want to enter any of the temporary reception centres in Bosnia.

According to the European Union Agency for Asylum, EUAA, Italy received around 20 asylum requests from Palestinians between October and November 2023.

This is consistent with the number of applications lodged between October and November 2022, which was also around 20. Between July and September 2023, Italy reported lodging around 30 applications from Palestinians. Data from December 2023 are still not available.

The number of asylum applications does not reflect the number of Palestinians that actually reached Italy, however.

In Poland, 19 Palestinians submitted applications for international protection in 2023, up from 12 in 2022. Five Palestinians submitted applications for international protection in Poland from October 7, 2023, to January 22, 2024.

The EU Asylum Agency told BIRN that, by the end of November 2023, no Palestinians had applied for asylum in Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia.

“However, we should note some EU+ countries do take different approaches to the issue of Statelessness and Palestinians and, therefore, some might report Palestinian applications as coming from stateless individuals, under Regulation (EU) 2020/851. However, it is not possible to provide disaggregated figures for that dataset,” added the EU Asylum Agency.

The Croatian Ministry of the Interior told BIRN that from October 1, 2022, until January 21, 2024, 227 citizens of Palestine expressed their intention to seek international protection in Croatia. But only 10 of them actually applied for international protection.

Eight Palestinian citizens sought asylum in Moldova in 2023 and just 1 in 2022.

In Bulgaria politicians voiced concerns back in October 2023 that refugees from Palestine might seek to enter the country, but so far this is not the case. Bulgaria’s State Refugee Agency told BIRN that there has been no increased presence of Palestinian refugees and that no Palestinians had applied for protection status since the bloodshed of early October.

In early November, Bulgarian and Palestinian citizens, mostly members of mixed Bulgarian-Palestinian families, were evacuated from the Gaza strip and arrived in Sofia by state-owned planes – 36 people on November 2 and 18 people on November 4.

The only recent time that the presence of Palestinian refugees was noted in the news was on October 31, when seven migrants, identifying as Palestinians, were detained in a village near the town of Dobrich.

On August 28, a group of 21 Palestinians on the move were found in a bus near the mountain range of Stara Planina and were held by the authorities.

Between October 9, 2023, and January 14, 2024, no Palestinian citizens requested asylum in Montenegro, according to the country’s Interior Ministry.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA, said that from October 7 2023, to January 29, 2024, the number of displaced Palestinians staying at its shelters or close to them had reached 1,700,000.

SOURCE:

https://balkaninsight.com/2024/02/05/palestinians-fleeing-to-southeast-europe-mostly-seek-asylum-in-turkey-greece/