The Palestinians who have arrived in San Marino number two.
Two university students, aged 23 and 24, enrolled in the Design degree course at the University of San Marino.
No other group is on its way, and no new entries are planned in the short term. This is the clarification from the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Luca Beccari, reached by Insider after weeks in which the issue has been portrayed as an emergency.
The numbers, at last.
Far from a wave. The two young men arrived in May from the Gaza Strip through the IUPALS programme, the university corridor promoted by the Italian Foreign Ministry (Farnesina) and the Conference of Italian Rectors, the same one that on the same flight brought another 57 students to Italy.
They hold a multi-year scholarship awarded by the University following a selection process carried out by a committee, a residence permit tied to the duration of their studies, and accommodation provided by Caritas.
They study, attend Italian language courses, take the bus.
That’s it.
Selected and vetted, not simply “let in”.
Beccari insists on one point: the two students went through a multi-level screening process — academic, diplomatic and security-related — involving the Department of Foreign Affairs, Italian authorities and the Gendarmerie.
Bringing them to Mount Titano took nearly a year, as the Secretary himself recalled before the Foreign Affairs Commission.
A year, for two people.
Who is asking for what.
This is where the narrative of recent weeks short-circuits.
It is not the Foreign Ministry that is seeking out refugees to bring to San Marino. The Government set a legal framework for reception in December, but reports of individual cases come from the San Marino for Palestine collective, which submits them on an ongoing basis.
Every request, Beccari explains, is examined by the Gendarmerie. And so far, none has reached the point of translating into an actual arrival.
The real bottleneck is not in San Marino.
Before the Commission, the Secretary spoke of the possibility of a couple of family units flagged by the collective.
A possibility, not a timeline. The sticking point is the exit permits from Palestinian territories, controlled by Israel, over which San Marino has virtually no leverage. If it took the Italian Foreign Ministry nearly a year to bring in two students with all their paperwork in order, the picture speaks for itself.
And the housing?
The regulation approved in July identifies three public properties in Montegiardino, only two of which are residential, with checks entrusted to the Foreign Ministry and the Gendarmerie.
This is the real scale of the phenomenon: two apartments, currently empty of any Palestinians.
A question of method.
One can be for or against taking in refugees — that is a legitimate debate.
But it must be conducted on the basis of real numbers. Two students are not an invasion, a possibility blocked at the border is not an imminent arrival, and a report from a collective is not a government decision.
When journalism stops distinguishing between these things, it is no longer reporting reality — it is exploiting it.
