{"id":378486,"date":"2025-11-14T14:21:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T14:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/378486\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T14:21:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T14:21:18","slug":"palestinians-fleeing-gaza-detained-on-plane-at-south-africa-airport-for-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/378486\/","title":{"rendered":"Palestinians fleeing Gaza detained on plane at South Africa airport for hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some 160 Palestinians fleeing Gaza were stranded on their plane at Johannesburg\u2019s O.R. Tambo Airport for 12 hours on Thursday before eventually being allowed entry by South African Authorities.<\/p>\n

Footage circulating on social media showed a Palestinian woman on the plane in tears over the situation.<\/p>\n

After \u201ctwo straight days of hardship and toil, between buses and planes, we received a very sad surprise,\u201d she said. \u201cThe state is unable to receive us just because we\u2019re people coming from a war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy home is gone. I don\u2019t have anywhere to go, any shelter. Where will we go? Enough,\u201d she cried, adding: \u201cWhy us?\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Haaretz, the group left Gaza early Wednesday morning, via the Strip\u2019s southern Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel, following Israeli vetting.<\/p>\n

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Members of the group were then taken by bus to Israel\u2019s Ramon Airport, near Eilat, where they boarded a chartered plane to Kenya\u2019s capital, Nairobi, and from there boarded the chartered flight to Johannesburg.<\/p>\n

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South Africa won’t let refugees from Gaza leave the plane at Johannesburg airport tarmac. The Gazans have uploaded clips of their families stranded inside the plane.pic.twitter.com\/9OaViti79j<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Ahmed Quraishi (@_AhmedQuraishi) November 13, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

An earlier group departing Gaza made an identical trip some two weeks ago and disembarked in Johannesburg without incident, Haaretz said. Both journeys were organized by an hitherto unknown organization called Al-Majd, which has received many requests from Gazans who want to leave the Strip, the report said.\n<\/p>\n

The incident sparked widespread criticism of South Africa on social media as the country, which has led the allegations of genocide<\/a> against Israel, was seen as unwilling to actually assist Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Imtiaz Sooliman, a South African activist who has been helping the Gazans, blamed Israel, saying that it had sent the plane without coordinating with South Africa and had failed to put exit stamps on passports. It was unclear from Sooliman\u2019s account how the Palestinians would have traveled to and from Kenya.<\/p>\n

The South African Zionist Federation on Friday called Sooliman\u2019s allegation a \u201ccalculated distortion weaponized to inflame outrage over facts,\u201d given Israel uses electronic visas instead of physical passport stamps.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which oversees the flow of people and goods to and from Gaza, also told Haaretz that the Palestinians had received visas from South Africa ahead of time. COGAT was also cited by the newspaper as saying that, as a rule, Israel always makes sure that there is a country that will accept Gazans departing the Strip.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the South African Broadcasting Corporation on Thursday, Sooliman, founder of South African NGO Gift of the Givers, said the Gazans stranded at the airport in Johannesburg included a pregnant woman and several children, and that they were left hungry on a poorly kept plane with inadequate bathrooms, and were \u201creally distraught coming from two years of genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel has vehemently rejected accusations of genocide in Gaza and accused Hamas of using Gazans as human shields.<\/p>\n

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BREAKING NEWS | About 160 Palestinian refugees have landed at OR Tambo International Airport this morning. The Gift of the Givers’ Imtiaz Sooliman says their passports don’t have stamps, and among them are children and pregnant women. pic.twitter.com\/X68TXjGpgn<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 SABC News (@SABCNews) November 13, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

According to Sooliman, the earlier flight of Gazans fleeing to South Africa carried 176 people. He said his and other aid groups attended to the Gazans\u2019 needs upon learning of their arrival in Johannesburg on October 28.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThese people were displaced. They didn\u2019t know where to go. They had no contact numbers, no phone numbers,\u201d said Sooliman.<\/p>\n

He added that the first group\u2019s relatives informed his organization on Wednesday that a second group was scheduled to arrive the next day.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody knew about that plane,\u201d he said. \u201cIt seems\u2026 Israel is voluntarily removing people from Gaza \u2014 you know, this is ethnic cleansing at its best \u2014 and taking away their goods, their hygiene packs, their food, sending them onto chartered planes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sooliman urged authorities to \u201cinvestigate how people are coming on chartered planes without stamps. Israel did not stamp the passports.\u201d As a result, he said, South African border control officers \u201ccouldn\u2019t allow them to get off the plane, simply because they were following rules\u201d by not letting passengers alight in the country without valid travel documents.<\/p>\n

Following Sooliman\u2019s personal appeal to South Africa\u2019s International Relations and Cooperation Minister Ronald Lamola and to the ministry\u2019s director-general Zane Dangor, the Gazans were let off the plane hours after landing, the activist said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people have already offered food, clothing and medical support\u201d for the Gazans who arrived in South Africa on Thursday, said Sooliman.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tA Palestinian man walks past an unexploded missile in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City on November 12, 2025. (Omar Al-Qattaa \/ AFP)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really grateful for South Africans, grateful for the government for making this happen, in keeping with our policy\u201d of encouraging sanctions against Israel and pursuing genocide charges against the country at the International Court of Justice, said Sooliman.<\/p>\n

Accusing Sooliman of \u201cattacking Israel for South Africa\u2019s own procedures,\u201d the South African Zionist Federation lambasted the activist\u2019s \u201cattempt to pressure Home Affairs, demanding entry for the group as if he were a shadow minister.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSouth Africa is governed by the rule of law, not by the demands of private organizations. No NGO, regardless of its humanitarian image, has veto power over border control or immigration statutes,\u201d said the federation.<\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s President Cyril Ramaphosa said the country will \u201cobviously need to look at the origins (of the Palestinians\u2019 journey), where it started, the reason why they\u2019ve been brought here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOrdinarily, we would have said they should go back because they didn\u2019t have any documentation. But\u2026out of compassion, and because they are a people that we as South Africa have raised our hands to support, we felt that we should accept them,\u201d he told reporters in Soweto, where he was overseeing a clean-up for next week\u2019s G20 summit.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tHumanitarian aid enters Gaza via the Kerem Shalom Crossing with Israel, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, November 2, 2025. (Abed Rahim Khatib\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

Ramaphosa added that South African intelligence agencies, the Home Affairs and the Department of International Relations had assessed the group.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to do a proper evaluation and see what the future portends. We will make an announcement so that the people of South Africa know precisely what is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

The foreign ministries of Israel and South Africa did not immediately respond to requests for comment, Haaretz said.<\/p>\n

A security source cited by the newspaper said Israel has made the departure of Gazans easier, and approved over 95 percent of requests to leave the Strip, ever since US President Donald Trump, in February, presented a plan to oust Gaza\u2019s residents and rebuild the Strip as a Mediterranean Riviera.<\/p>\n

Trump appeared to back away from that plan in the comprehensive Gaza ceasefire plan<\/a> he presented in September, which states: \u201cNo one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how many people have left the devastated Strip since the war, sparked by the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in southern Israel, though Hebrew media reports have placed the number at around 38,000.<\/p>\n

Reuters contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

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