South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has pledged to get to the bottom of a “mysterious” plane carrying 153 Palestinians who he said had apparently been “flushed out” of Gaza by Israel.
The 153 men, women and children who arrived in Johannesburg on board a flight from Nairobi were detained by border police on their plane for more than 12 hours because their passports lacked an exit stamp from Israel.
The Department of Home Affairs eventually authorised the passengers’ entry into South Africa that evening, after receiving assurances from NGO Gift of the Givers that they would be taken care of.
“These are residents of Gaza who, in a rather mysterious way, were put on a plane that transited through Nairobi and then landed here,” Ramaphosa said on Friday.
He said while they would welcome the passengers “out of compassion”, there would be an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the flight.
Al Jazeera reported that the charter flight was facilitated by a controversial agency in close collaboration with the Israeli military.
An Israeli military official told AP that an organisation called Al-Majd arranged for their transit. According to Al Jazeera, the organisation posted an advert promising safe passage to Palestinians out of Gaza.
In a pop-up on Al-Majd’s European website, the NGO warns against reports of individuals impersonating representatives of the organisation “and contacting people through fake numbers, requesting money or cryptocurrency transfers under the pretext of facilitating travel or humanitarian aid”.
Al Jazeera reporter Nour Odeh described the organisation as “full of smokescreens” and said there was no office for Al-Majd Europe in the neighbourhood it said it was based in.
“To get them out of Gaza, coordination with the Israeli army is required. There is just no other way around it. So, the Israeli role in all of this is certain; we just don’t know to what extent,” she wrote.
The founder of Gift of the Givers said on Thursday that he did not know who had chartered the aircraft, adding that the first plane carrying 176 Palestinians had landed in Johannesburg on 28 October.
The Palestinian embassy in South Africa said the flight “was organised by an unregistered and deceptive organisation, which exploited the tragic humanitarian conditions of our people in Gaza, duped families, collected money from them, and facilitated their travel irregularly and irresponsibly”.
Since the beginning of the war in Gaza in October 2023, Palestinians have feared that Israel’s ultimate goal was to remove the population of Gaza.
There have been repeated reports of plans by Israeli officials to expel Palestinians from Gaza, with the UN warning as early as December 2023 that this appeared to be an aim of Israel’s assault.
