A Palestinian man dismissed from his job in Gaza after the war began is suing the European Union for an alleged breach of Belgian law.
Mohammad Baraka, who worked for the EU border assistance mission (EUBam) at Rafah since its start in 2006 as an unarmed civilian third‑party presence, has filed a case in a Brussels court.
He was evacuated to Cairo with EU help after the war and continued to work there, as did other colleagues based in the West Bank. This year, after the EU decided to close the Rafah office because of the conflict, Baraka was dismissed.
In the claim lodged with a Brussels tribunal, his lawyer Selma Benkhelifa says Baraka “does not criticise the decision to close the Rafah office” given the security situation. But she argues that his EU counterparts who worked at Rafah “were not dismissed, they were transferred elsewhere” to continue working, which she says amounts to “discrimination on the basis of his nationality.”
The European Commission said it had no comment.
The crux of the legal argument is that Baraka was employed under Belgian law but kept on a rolling one‑year contract, which the claim alleges breaches national rules requiring that three consecutive fixed‑term contracts be converted into permanent employment with attendant rights.
“A provision that allows an employer to renew fixed‑term contracts is contrary to Belgian and European public policy,” the claim says, adding that it is “shocking to note that a European institution is circumventing public policy provisions intended to protect workers. The applicant’s contract must be reclassified as a permanent contract.”
Baraka said he filed the case because of the “injustice” he suffered. He recalled that during the early days of the war in Gaza he faced “an unknown and frightening fate.” He accepted evacuation by the EU to a safe place as an employee who had served for 20 years, he said, but added that had he known the evacuation would lead to dismissal and leave him without residence or basic rights, he would not have agreed, and that none of this was explained to him beforehand.
