As with many Palestinians, the right of return is a major preoccupation for Khaled al-Mudallal. The return he is campaigning for, however, is not to an ancestral village in Israel. He wants to be allowed to go back to Bradford.

The 22-year-old student should be starting autumn term at the University of Bradford, working mornings at a local hardware store, studying in the daytime and socialising with friends in the evenings. Instead he is one of thousands of people who have been trapped for four months inside the Gaza Strip, unable to leave because of the Israeli lockdown on the territory since the radical Islamist group Hamas took power in June.

A studious young man with a hint of a Yorkshire accent, Mr al-Mudallal travelled in June to Gaza from Bradford, where he has lived for more than six years, to pick up Duaa, his wife, and take her to England. While in Gaza, however, warfare erupted between Hamas and its western-backed rival Fatah, leaving the Islamists in control. With Hamas refusing to recognise Israel’s right to exist, the Jewish state has sealed the borders, allowing only a trickle of people in or out.

On Tuesday the Supreme Court rejected a plea by the Israeli human rights group Gisha to allow Mr al-Mudallal to return to England and resume his third year of business management studies. “It’s killing my future aspirations,” said Mr al-Mudallal yesterday at the Islamic University, where he has volunteered to teach business studies in English while awaiting his fate. He said that there were 6,000 people on the waiting list, including many other students at risk of losing their scholarships and university places abroad. Israeli army buses have taken out only 450 people in the past two months.

“At the rate they are going, it’ll take one and a half years to get out of Gaza,” said Sari Bashi, the director of Gisha.

Before he left Bradford, Mr al-Mudallal rented a house and bought a car. Now his debts are running up in England and he is in danger of losing his part-time job as a sales assistant.

He moved to Bradford at the age of 16 to be with his father, a professor from the southern Gaza refugee city of Rafah, who was doing a course in peace studies there. He stayed on and earned a place at the university.

“I’m not causing a security threat to the Israelis,” he said. “I’m not fighting to get my village back, I just want to leave and get back to my studies.”

He has been heartened by rallies of support at the university, where 200 students came together to back his cause. They have set up a website, www.letkhaledstudy.co.uk, which features a letter-writing campaign to Gordon Brown.

“I miss everyone over there,” he said. “I ask them to get on with their lives, but not to forget about me.”

While his fellow students swing back into the rhythm of university life, Mr al-Mudallal faces an uncertain future, unsure if his studies will continue. But still he dreams of returning to complete his bachelor’s degree and start postgraduate studies before eventually returning to help Gaza, where the economy has collapsed under the weight of embargo. “For me, my education is my soul,” he said.

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