Palestinians, especially those in the Gaza Strip, must be wary of networks that seek to remove them from their homes in line with Israeli interests, the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has warned.
The warning came a day after 153 Palestinians, who left Gaza without knowing their final destination and without proper paperwork, arrived in South Africa on board a flight from Kenya on Friday and were held up for 12 hours as authorities investigated the issue.
South Africa, which is advancing a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), gave the war-ravaged Palestinians 90-day visas.
The Palestinian ministry on Saturday expressed “deep appreciation” for the support from the South African authorities and people, as well as the decision to grant temporary visas for the people who it said departed from Ramon airport in southern Israel.
The Palestinian embassy in Pretoria said it is working to assist the travellers who have “endured over two years of Israeli genocidal war, killing, displacement, and destruction”.
But it warned that companies, unofficial entities and unregistered intermediaries inside Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory are trying to mislead Palestinians and incite them towards leaving.
“The ministry calls upon our people, especially our people in the Gaza Strip, to exercise caution and not fall prey to human trafficking, to merchants and companies of blood, and to agents of displacement,” it said.
According to South Africa’s Border Management Authority, 130 Palestinians ended up entering the country, while 23 were transferred from South Africa to other destinations from the airport itself. Most are expected to apply for asylum.
A South African humanitarian aid organisation, Gift of the Givers, said it was committed to accommodating the visitors during their stay.
Charity founder Imtiaz Sooliman told public broadcaster SABC that he did not know who had chartered the aircraft, and that the first plane carrying 176 Palestinians had landed in Johannesburg on October 28, with some of the passengers departing for other countries.
He said accounts from the Palestinian arrivals indicate that Israel appears to be removing people from Gaza and putting them on a plane without stamping their passports, in order to leave them stranded in third countries.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office have not reacted to the incident, but Israel and the United States have repeatedly pushed to move as many Palestinians out of Gaza as possible, holding negotiations with many countries over this.
The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli military organisation in charge of the Gaza border crossings, was quoted as saying by Israeli media that it received approval from a third country to receive the Palestinians as part of an Israeli government policy allowing Gaza residents to leave. The third country was not named.
After facing nonstop bombing and famine in Gaza, the Palestinians were told to leave behind all their belongings and hop on a flight to an unknown destination.
Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book about Israel’s arms and surveillance industry, said the transit scheme could have been operating weeks or months before being noticed.
He told Al Jazeera from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta that there have been rumours about companies making such flights, which apparently “requires Israeli permission as well as other countries’ permissions”.
“This is the concept of people making money out of other people’s misery,” he said, also pointing to the murky operations and website of the company that ran the scheme.
“I see it as a form of ethnic cleansing,” Loewenstein said. “The issue is people providing [the transit] and the Israeli state facilitating it, a state where many ministers in the Israeli government, and frankly the Israeli public, want no Palestinians left in Gaza, and I fear this is part of that mission.”
