{"id":592060,"date":"2026-08-13T13:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T13:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/592060\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T13:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T13:46:09","slug":"this-is-the-worst-day-in-my-life-gazan-woman-with-scholarship-to-ucc-refused-visa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/592060\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;This is the worst day in my life:&#8217; Gazan woman with scholarship to UCC refused visa\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">A young Gazan woman who was granted an Irish Government-backed scholarship at University College Cork has now been denied a visa to travel here.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Zainab Eid, a 30-year-old physiotherapist who previously worked for Medecins Sans Frontieres, is currently living in a tent in Gaza with her husband Mohammed and their four-year-old son Karim.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">She had been <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.echolive.ie\/corknews\/arid-41891494.html\"> accepted to study for a master\u2019s degree <\/a>in public health at UCC under the Ireland-Palestine Scholarship Programme (IPSP) and is due to begin her course on September 7.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">However, a letter from the Irish embassy in Israel informed Ms Eid on Tuesday that her application for a visa has been refused.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">She told  The Echo she has been crying since she received the letter and hasn&#8217;t slept.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI was waiting for this opportunity to come to Cork. I fought for it for more than two years, so I was not expecting to be refused without clear causes,\u201d Ms Eid said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cIreland is the best place in the world for education, especially UCC university.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\n            \u201cThis is the worst day in my life. My eyes are swollen from crying all night.\u201d\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Ms Eid had recently sought a visa for her son so he would have been allowed to join her in Ireland had her own application proven successful.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Among the reasons listed by the embassy for refusing Ms Eid\u2019s own application was a finding that documentation of her employment and educational history was insufficient.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Douglas solicitor Susan Doyle, who is acting as Ms Eid\u2019s lawyer, said it was \u201cunreasonable and irrational\u201d to expect people living in the rubble of Gaza to provide documents relating to work and education history.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cThe ministry for health where Zainab worked is no longer functioning,&#8221; she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">&#8220;The hospitals have been destroyed. We cannot prove her full past work experience.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Additionally, the embassy had cited \u201cthe possible risk of [Ms Eid] overstaying in the State\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">However, Ms Doyle said, her client had compelling reasons to return home \u2013 to her husband and young son.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Thomas Gould, Sinn F\u00e9in TD for Cork North Central, who had made representations on Ms Eid\u2019s behalf, and he was \u201cshocked\u201d by the decision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cAsking people to produce paperwork when Gaza has been annihilated and there\u2019s hardly a building standing after a genocide is disgraceful,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\n            \u201cThe Irish Government has a lot of talk about recognising the Palestinian state and raising it in Europe, but the proof is plain to see.\u201d\u00a0\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The Department of Justice said it does not comment on individual cases.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">However, a spokesperson said that in 2026, \u201cat least 27 study visas have been granted in respect of Palestinian nationals\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cThere has been no recent change to visa processing procedures, approval criteria or documentation requirements in any of the department&#8217;s visa offices,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A young Gazan woman who was granted an Irish Government-backed scholarship at University College Cork has now been&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4712,79,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-592060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-israel-palestine","tag-cork-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}