Belgium’s king and the country’s foreign minister both say they can do no more to evacuate 13 Gaza students to take up the scholarships they won at Belgian universities — yet other European states, led by Italy, have shown it can be done.

All it took to get out “several dozen” Gaza students via Jordan was a “limited diplomatic effort”, a Dutch diplomat told EUobserver.

And the UK extracted over 100 Gazan students for the 2026/2027 academic year.

The group of 13 Gaza students trying to reach Belgium had their hopes raised when the Royal Palace of King Philippe replied to their appeals in July.

The palace had highlighted their case with Belgian foreign minister Maxime Prévot, the palace said, writing on a page emblazoned with a purple crown letterhead.

But the students’ hopes were dashed on 10 August, when Prévot’s ministry told them there was nothing it could do.

“In the current situation, no adjustment of the visa procedure [e.g. to permit online visa applications] can in itself remove the main obstacle: the possibility of actually leaving Gaza,” a Belgian foreign ministry spokesperson told EUobserver on 20 August.

“Minister Prévot understands the frustration of the students, but we also have to be honest: Once it becomes possible to make progress again, other particularly vulnerable groups – children, for example – will probably have to be considered first,” they added.

But Salwa Abu Elhaj, a 23-year-old from Al-Maghazi in central Gaza, who lives in a refugee tent, but who won a master’s in communications scholarship at the prestigious KU Leuven university in Brussels, said: “We’re just asking for a temporary, practical pathway to reach our universities, not permanent immigration.”

Ahmed Abu Jhabi, who won a scholarship at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp (Belgium), also said by phone from Gaza: “I’m not saying Belgium should choose to save students instead [of children], but why does it have to be a choice in the first place?”.

The 28-year-old doctor spoke on a crackly, unstable line, calmly, and in eloquent English on 17 August, shortly after coming off a 30-hour shift in an emergency room in a field hospital following an Israeli airstrike.

Abu Elhaj and won their Belgian master’s places in an open competition with EU applicants against the odds.

“I studied whenever I could, sometimes after long shifts, without electricity, or a proper place to sit down. The internet would disappear, food wasn’t always available, and there were days when I was simply too frightened or too tired to think, but somehow I kept going. I had no choice,” Abu Jhabi said.

“I was exhausted, but I knew this scholarship could change my life,” he said.

“I also kept going because this master’s course would give me the kind of expertise I need to help rebuild Gaza’s health sector after the war,” he added.

The Royal Palace declined to comment.

King Philippe with top EU officials and Belgian foreign minister Maxime Prévot in Brussels on 13 January 2026 (Source: EU Commission)

Belgian king ‘deeply concerned’ by Gaza

But King Philippe gets some 60,000 letters a year and has no legal power to intervene in the appeals, beyond a Prévot-type referral.

“In this particular case [the group of Gaza students], I’m afraid that the Royal Palace has done all it could within the scope of its prerogatives,” a well-informed source told EUobserver.

“Of course, he [the king] is closely following the situation in Gaza and is deeply concerned by it,” the source added.

King Philippe was one of the first EU royals to speak of human suffering in Gaza, in a TV speech in 2025.

Prévot also eye-witnessed Israeli fire in Beirut on 8 April, when airstrikes killed over 350 people near the Belgian embassy while he was there.

And his ministry told EUobserver it has evacuated over 1,000 Palestinians since 2023, in other operations.

But the well-informed source could not confirm if King Philippe had ever personally heard of Abu Jhabi.