South African activists have alleged that Israel is using a shadowy humanitarian group to force Palestinians out of Gaza, in what they decried as the latest form of ethnic cleansing to take place since October 2023.
On Thursday, a plane carrying 153 Palestinians from Gaza landed at South Africa’s OR Tambo International Airport, but the plane was held on the tarmac for around 12 hours, with passengers not allowed to disembark – triggering confusion and anger against local authorities.
Within hours, however, activists and South African authorities discovered several irregularities in the way the Palestinians’ travel had been organised by a body called Al-Majd Europe.
Activists found that not only had the South African government been unaware of their arrival, but the evacuees themselves were not in possession of any documentation or paperwork to assist with their processing in the country.
The activists said that what was even more shocking was that several Palestinians said they had embarked on the trip without fully knowing where they were going.
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Na’eem Jeenah, a long-time activist and scholar based in Johannesburg, told Middle East Eye that the developments suggested Israel was exploiting Palestinian desperation to quietly advance a policy of forced displacement of Palestinians with the group Al-Majd Europe, acting as a conduit for their removal.
It also seemed to showcase an effort to permanently dislodge a professional class – doctors, educators, business people – from remaining in Gaza.
‘Israel is preying on Palestinians in Gaza’
– Khalid Vawda, activist
“It is clear to us that Al-Majd is a front for the Israeli state and the Israeli intelligence, and is a project to aid in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.”
Jeenah’s assertions came after an unnamed Israeli military official told the Associated Press that Israel had helped facilitate the transfer of Palestinians from Gaza to the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing in southern Israel before they were taken to Ramon Airport, where they boarded a flight that took them first to Nairobi, and then Johannesburg.
Sarah Oosthuizen, another activist part of the collective attending to the Palestinians in Johannesburg, told MEE that the passengers’ boarding passes showed a variety of destinations, from India to Malaysia and Indonesia.
“So there was no reason for the passengers at any stage to actually know where they were going,” she said, adding that it did “seem to be a form of human trafficking.”
MEE reached out to Al-Majd Europe for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Shadowy group
According to its website, Al-Majd Europe was formed in 2010, having been purportedly registered in Germany with headquarters in Jerusalem.
The group says that it offers humanitarian evacuation, emergency food distribution, and a medical assistance program.
“We specialise in providing aid and rescue efforts to Muslim communities in conflict and war zones,” the group says on its website.
“This includes facilitating patients’ access to critical medical care, securing travel abroad for treatment, and ensuring that their families accompany them throughout their treatment,” it adds.
But Khalid Vawda, an activist with Social Intifada – a group based in Johannesburg – who first raised concerns about the organisation in late October when he first encountered it, said it appeared to have emerged out of nowhere.
He told MEE that Al-Majd Europe had been advertising its ability to evacuate Palestinians out of Gaza for months on social media.
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MEE understands that the Palestinians who travelled to South Africa had either discovered Al-Majd Europe on their own and sought out its help or had been approached by representatives in Gaza.
Vawda said the refugees communicated with what appeared to be a Palestinian representative of the group over WhatsApp.
“None of them suspected anything, because they assumed it was just another avenue to leave Gaza since Rafah is closed,” he said.
Despite the so-called ceasefire being implemented in October, Israel has continued to sporadically bomb Gaza, with hundreds of Palestinians having been killed over the past few weeks.
More than 80 percent of structures have been destroyed, leaving large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable – a situation expected to become catastrophic with the onset of winter. Incoming aid remains slow and insufficient.
“I absolutely think that Israel is preying on Palestinians in Gaza,” Vawda said.
“On another level, they are profiting off people who are vulnerable, who have PTSD from two years of genocide, who have seen their loved ones perish,” he added.
Families paid different amounts, ranging from $1,500 to $5,000 per person, and were told of a meeting point in Gaza from where the journey would begin on a chartered flight.
On Saturday, Shimi Zuaretz, a spokesman for Cogat, the Israeli body that runs civil affairs in the occupied West Bank as well as Gaza, told AFP that Palestinians had been granted permission to leave Gaza after the agency had “received approval from a third country to receive them”.
Zuaretz did not specify which country had agreed to receive them.
A day earlier, however, the Palestinian embassy in South Africa said the flight was arranged by an “unregistered and misleading organisation that exploited the tragic humanitarian conditions of our people in Gaza, deceived families, collected money from them, and facilitated their travel in an irregular and irresponsible manner”.
A second flight
Though the flight’s arrival on 13 November came as a surprise for the South African government, Oosthuizen said that organisers in Johannesburg had an inkling that a plane full of refugees might be arriving that day.
She said that local activists had stumbled upon a Palestinian family in early November in the city who said they had come to South Africa on a chartered flight with several others on 28 October.
After some digging, local organisers discovered that there were close to 180 other Palestinians who had come on that flight; some said they were expecting members of their families to arrive on a second flight on 13 November.
Organisers said that some of those who had taken the flights had been promised accommodation for several months at their final destination.
On arrival, however, the refugees found themselves in a foreign country without any guidance, support or explanation of their status or rights.
‘The manner in which they left Gaza… points to the deep involvement of the Israeli state, and Israel’s violation of the rights of people desperate for respite from its genocidal atrocities in Gaza’
– Civil society statement
Instead, they each received an address of a hotel in the city.
Not only were they immediately separated from each other, but the accommodation was only for a mere seven days.
Before long, communication over WhatsApp also concluded. Al Majd Europe disappeared.
Jeenah, who boarded the plane on Thursday while it remained on the tarmac for close to 12 hours, described the conditions on board as abysmal and horrific.
He said the passengers hadn’t been given food or water for the entirety of the flight and that there were babies that hadn’t had their nappies changed in 24 hours.
There was a pregnant woman struggling with labour pains. Separately, a child was suffering convulsions as they waited for hours in the heat to disembark, he said.
Jeenah narrated that the Palestinians on the flight had been stripped of their belongings in Israel. They made it to Gaza with their wallet, phone, passport, and the clothes on their backs and were not allowed to carry anything else.
Most disturbingly, Jeenah said, when they flew out of Israel, each family had different ideas of where they might be headed.
“The manner in which they left Gaza and were unknowingly transported to South Africa points to the deep involvement of the Israeli state, and Israel’s violation of the rights of people desperate for respite from its genocidal atrocities in Gaza,” a civil society statement sent to MEE on Saturday said.
‘Mysterious plane’
After several deliberations, consultations and representations from civil society groups on Thursday, the South African government allowed the plane to disembark.
On Friday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa described the refugees as “people from Gaza who somehow mysteriously were put on a plane”.
“We obviously need to look at their origins, where it started, the reason why they have been brought here … because they didn’t have any documentation,” he added.
Though the Palestinian Foreign Ministry expressed thanks to Ramaphosa’s administration, local activists say they are appalled by the lack of care applied by South Africa’s Border Management Authority (BMA) towards the Palestinians.
Oosthuizen noted that even if those on board didn’t have the right paperwork, it should not have taken so long for the government to attend to passengers’ needs, given that these were people who had just lived through a genocide.
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She said that passengers were exhausted, dehydrated, and disoriented.
The incident also appeared to illustrate fault lines within the South African government on its approach to Palestine.
Having lost its parliamentary majority in June 2024, the African National Congress (ANC) shares power with several other parties, including the pro-Israel Democratic Alliance (DA).
The Department of Home Affairs (DHA), which works closely with the BMA, is headed by Leon Schreiber, a member of the DA.
Activists said it was only after the intervention of Ramaphosa himself that the BMA gave the Palestinians 90-day visas to enter.
However, the DHA said in a statement that once it was confirmed that the refugees “would be provided with accommodation and care during their visit, the Minister of Home Affairs presented the new fact set to the BMA Commissioner for consideration, including on humanitarian grounds”.
However, activists are calling for a full investigation into both Al-Majd Europe and the response of the South African government.
“We are asking for a full investigation, not just into the background [but also] into the way that it was handled here in South Africa,” Oosthuizen said.
“Our government has taken a pro-Palestinian stance. You’ve seen us at the ICC, the ICJ, and for us, this is very embarrassing; the way that these people in dire need were treated,” she added.
