The Government of South Africa has opened an investigation into arrival of a plane with more than 150 Gazans on board at Johannesburg International Airport last week on suspicion of existence of “an agenda to cleanse the Strip and the West Bank of Palestinians”.
The mysterious arrival of this group of Palestinians has raised great suspicions about the humanitarian organization Al-Majd Europe who, with the approval of the Israeli authorities, coordinated an operation surrounded by doubts.
This incident has triggered accusations against Israel for “human trafficking” and to carry out an agenda of Palestinian displacement and “ethnic cleansing”, and that are reminiscent of the plan outlined by Trump at the beginning of the year proposing to relocate Gazans to places of peace to turn the Strip in a ‘Middle Eastern Riviera’.
To the 153 passengers They were allowed to leave Gaza to board a charter flight at Ramon Airport (Negev desert, southern Israel) without knowing their destination and who arrived in Johannesburg last Thursday, November 13 after a previous stopover in Nairobi (Kenya), where they changed aircraft and airline, according to the South African NGO Gift the Givers, which assisted them upon their arrival.
The Palestinian group, however, He had to remain inside the aircraft on the landing strip for thirteen hours without being able to disembark because, as the South African Government acknowledged, they were caught “by surprise” and they showed up without the necessary visa, without a return ticket or passports stamped upon departure from Israel.
Finally the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosaallowed these people to enter with a 90-day visa exemption.
$2,000 per seat
Two of these Gazans acknowledged to Reuters that they paid $2,000 per seat for their families to travel to South Africa on a trip organized by the NGO Al-Majd Europe that offered to escape the devastated enclave after months of bombings, evacuations and lack of basic supplies.
They both contacted this organization about six months ago after having seen advertisements on the Internet. The offer was only aimed at families and required applicants to have a passport.
As they explained to Reuters, Al-Majd Europe contacted them via WhatsApp informing them that they had been granted security clearance.
They left Gaza by bus and crossed the Kerem Shalom border crossing, controlled by Israel, before being flown from Ramon airport. They arrived in South Africa on November 13.
“I am a lymphoma patient. How long would you have had to wait to be evacuated? I had to leave to receive treatment and to give a better life to my family,” Ramzi Abu Youssef, 42, said in a telephone conversation with Reuters from Johannesburg.
Abu Youssef left with his wife and three children, ages 8, 10 and 12, and said two of his daughters had been killed in an Israeli attack in June 2024 during a raid on the Nuseirat camp, where their home had been destroyed.
Shadows of a ghost NGO
This alleged humanitarian organization called Al-Majd Europe ‘sells itself’ on its website as an NGO which “provides aid and rescue to Muslim communities in conflict and war zones”, however does not provide evidence of his previous projects nor does he have any activity on his social networks.
According to its website, launched in February, the entity was founded in 2010 in Germany and has a headquarters in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood (occupied East Jerusalem), but does not provide its physical address or a contact telephone number.
According to media such as the Israeli Haaretz and the Qatari Al Jazeerathe organization offered the possibility of starting a new life in violence-free environments for a price of between $1,400 and $2,700 per family member, as babies or small children also paid, an option that some Gazans opted for in desperation despite uncertainty about its reliability.
The Embassy of the State of Palestine in South Africa denounced a few days ago that the supposed humanitarian organization “tried to disclaim all responsibility when complications arose.”
Likewise, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry has warned Gaza residents that “avoid falling into human trafficking networks, blood traffickers and displacement agents.”
Contradiction in Israel’s version
Israel’s Voluntary Emigration Office, under the Ministry of Defense, referred Al-Majd to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to help coordinate the departures and worked alongside COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of civil affairs in the occupied territories.
COGAT responded to EFE that the group of Gazans left the Strip with their approval after having received “the approval of a third country (South Africa) to host them”, an extreme that does not agree with the “surprise” expressed by the South African Government.
The NGO Gift the Givers reported to the Efe agency that, in addition to this aircraft, Another plane arrived in South Africa with 180 Gazans on October 28 under the same procedure and also through Al-Majd.
This organization does not know if in that case the passengers had a valid visa, but their destination was not revealed to them at the time.
“It is a very serious situation that could be leading to human trafficking,” Sarah Oosthuizen, spokesperson for the association, said in a telephone conversation from South Africa.