A PALESTINIAN mother was forced to make “decisions no human being should ever have to make” when she had to choose which family members she could afford to rescue.

Repeated refusals from the Home Office left her relatives stranded in Egypt for almost two years, before they were finally allowed to join her in Britain, a charity said yesterday.

Living in Britain at the time, Iman, whose real name has been changed to protect her identity, was pregnant when the genocide started in Gaza, before her family fled to the south of the besieged territory.

Her wheelchair-bound mother was killed as they travelled to Egypt, while she said her father survived the journey eating rotten bread. Two of her brothers and their families remain unaccounted for.

“The hardest thing was having to choose who could live and who had to stay behind,” she said.

“I didn’t have enough money to get everyone out. You have to make impossible decisions that no human being should ever have to make.”

Iman first came to Britain to study, receiving a scholarship to attend university.

She said Israeli bombing campaigns forced her family to leave the refugee camp where they were living in Gaza, to seek shelter in the al-Shifa Hospital.

Her mother, father, brother and sister were then forced to flee again when Israeli forces intensified their genocidal campaign again.

Iman said she eventually raised enough money to get her family out of Gaza and into Egypt, but subsequent refusals by the Home Office left her family stranded in the country for almost two years before they were reunited.

“When I saw them again, I couldn’t stop crying. I had held everything in for so long because I needed to survive,” Iman said.

Iman has since become a full-time carer for both of them, as well as her brother and young son, preventing her from taking on a job.

She and her son have been surviving on about £600 a month in Universal Credit. 

Humanity Care Relief’s Usman Dar said the charity provided the family with emergency financial support, adding: “No family should escape a war zone only to spend years trapped by paperwork and uncertainty.

“Iman had already suffered an unimaginable loss, yet she was still expected to keep fighting at every stage simply to bring her surviving relatives somewhere safe.”