Last month, we introduced our viewers to Rani Hemaid, who lives in Hamilton and has family members stuck in Gaza with no way out.
His story is one of hundreds as Canadians are urging Global Affairs Canada to expand its definition of what constitutes an immediate family member.
Hemaid’s phone rings at all hours of the day. On the other end of the line are people just as desperate as him to get their families out of Gaza.
“Every minute has 60 seconds. I have 60 thoughts in the minute spinning in my head,” Hemaid said.
“I am very desperate, frustrated, helpless, hopeless. But then I was like, I have to be strong.”
His elderly parents, siblings, young nieces, and nephews are trapped in Gaza City and Rafah, their lives under constant threat and bombardment.
“You feel like your heart jumps out of your body when you hear this and you shake. I lived it and I still can’t imagine how the children are living it,” Hemaid said.
READ MORE: Humanitarian crisis worsens in Gaza as Israel-Hamas fighting escalates
And Hemaid is not alone. He says nearly 800 Palestinian-Canadians and permanent residents are fighting to free their families.
On Nov. 20, Hemaid presented the federal government with data from families in Canada pleading for their loved ones’ safety, to no response.
“We have a government who for the last six weeks has completely failed to act,” Hamilton Centre MP Matthew Green said.
Global Affairs Canada has helped roughly 600 Canadian citizens, permanent residents and members of their immediate family cross from Gaza into Egypt. But nearly 200 are left behind and the definition of immediate family has been called into question.
“Where I come from, my culture, many other cultures, immediate family includes siblings, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles,” Hemaid said.
READ MORE: Calls grow for Canada to help extended family members out of Gaza
The government’s definition includes a spouse or child under 22-years-old. Hemaid and others are pleading for a change.
“It has been expanded in the past. What we’re calling for, special immigration measures, I reference what happened in Syria, obviously Ukraine,” Green said.
A Palestinian-Canadian man in Burlington is suing the federal government, global affairs’ policy is discriminatory. In files obtained by CHCH News, Mohammed Nofal’s family’s judicial review filing accuses the government of evacuating the foreign children and grandchildren of Canadians and permanent residents in Israel but refusing Palestinian-Canadians the same treatment.
“All we’re asking for is for the Palestinian-Canadians that are here to be given the same considerations and the same value in their lives for their loved ones by this liberal government that other people have gotten in the past,” Green said.
