After a three-month hiatus, France has resumed evacuations of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, diplomatic sources confirmed to The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. Done with little to no fanfare, the first of the new evacuations took place on October 26, with 20 French government scholarship holders exiting the Strip. Those permitted to exit Gaza were already on the scheduled evacuation list for August 6, which never went ahead.
"These operations are being carried out under extremely difficult conditions on the ground and involve very high risks for both the evacuees and the people operating the convoys," sources told the Post, adding "They are also dependent on local authorizations that must be obtained in order to leave the enclave and then travel to France."
The sources noted that, despite their best efforts, not all the necessary authorizations could be obtained in time for the October 26 operation, and the number of people evacuated, unfortunately, had to be reduced. However, the French Consulate General in Jerusalem and the Crisis and Support Center in Paris remain "fully mobilized to ensure that those who could not be evacuated can be in a future operation, as soon as conditions allow."
France paused evacuations over antisemitic Palestinian student
France paused evacuations from the Gaza Strip on August 1 pending an investigation into a Palestinian student’s antisemitic social media history. The student, Nour Atallah, was set to begin studying law and communications at the Sciences Po Lille university this fall, but had her status rescinded.
Atallah had shared multiple antisemitic and pro-Hitler content on her X/Twitter account @Atallah_Nur, which was subsequently deleted. This included sharing a post on October 9, 2023, which said, “The execution of hostages should not be random or hasty. The filming should be of high quality, befitting the joy of what occurred on Saturday morning [October 7]." She also shared a video of Adolf Hitler saying, “Kill the Jews everywhere.”
At 7:21 a.m. on October 7, she wrote, “Thank God.” Atallah also eulogized her uncle, Ayoub Atallah, who was the bodyguard for Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas. The two were killed at the same time in an IDF strike in March 2004.
At the start of August, Atallah was deported to Qatar.
In mid-July, the French National Court of Asylum (CNDA) ruled that all Palestinian nationals from the Gaza Strip who the United Nations does not protect can receive refugee status in France because of “the risk of persecution by the Israeli armed forces.”
However, following the incident with Atallah, France's minister for Europe and foreign affairs, Jean-Noel Barrot, said that the pre-screenings “carried out by the competent services of the relevant ministries have clearly not worked” and requested that an internal investigation be conducted to “ensure this would not happen again under any circumstances.”
Shortly after, he announced that he had halted evacuations of Gazans from the Gaza Strip: “No operation of this type, no evacuation of any kind will take place until we have drawn the consequences of this investigation.”
Between November 2023 and April 2025, at least 500 people were evacuated from Gaza to France by the Foreign Ministry. These evacuations have been managed by a crisis unit overseen by the Consulate General of France in Jerusalem.