It was only after their charter flight landed in Kenya and they were handed boarding cards for the next leg of their journey that Palestinian businessman Wesam Basheer and his family found out they were going to South Africa.
Basheer, his wife and their two small children were among some 180 people bussed out of Gaza in late October by a group called Al-Majd Europe, which has for months organised the departure of Palestinians from the devastated enclave through Israel’s Ramon airport.
Although the passengers initially had no idea where they were going, Basheer described the mood on the flight as happy.
“We were delighted, because even the unknown is better than Gaza,” said Basheer, who paid Al-Majd $12,000 in cryptocurrency to buy his family’s passage. “I owe it to my children to protect them, and I had to look for a way to take them out of that catastrophic situation.”
Hanan Jarrar, Palestinian ambassador to South Africa, smiles for a photo on a plane in Johannesburg, South Africa © Embassy of the State of Palestine / South Africa/Reuters
There are few facts available about Al-Majd, but it tapped deep demand among Palestinians yearning for new lives after two devastating years of war and hunger.
It is also clear that the group had strong enough connections with the Israeli state to whisk them through the front line, into Israeli territory and across the world — all in a country where ministers have championed the notion of emptying Gaza’s population.
While this has prompted furious scrutiny of Al-Majd’s origins and intentions, it has captured a painful reality for Gazans: despite the US-backed ceasefire, many see little hope in staying, even if it means leaving without knowing where they’re going or whether they’ll ever come back.
“In Gaza, we were all like the living dead,” said Mohammad Abu Saif, who left with his family on the same flight as Basheer. “And like any person in Gaza, I searched for a way to survive that hell.”
Though the six-week-old ceasefire has brought the worst of the conflict to an end, most of Gaza’s 2.1mn people have been left homeless by continued Israeli bombardment, which has reduced the territory to rubble.
Reconstruction, which is expected to take years and cost tens of billions of dollars, is unlikely to begin until an international security force is deployed, Hamas — whose October 7 2023 attack triggered the war — agrees to disarm and Israeli troops withdraw, a process fraught with uncertainty.
Without incomes or savings, many have no idea how they will rebuild their lives even if the ceasefire holds.
Ali, a graphic designer with a wife and two children, registered with Al-Majd five months ago and continues to wait for confirmation that he can leave.
“If you tell anyone in Gaza now, ‘Come and I’ll take you out without telling you the destination,’ I am sure they will agree,” Ali said. “Maybe out of a thousand people you ask, only one will refuse.” The Financial Times has used a pseudonym to protect his identity.
Displaced Palestinians try to drain water that has flooded their tents after heavy rain in Khan Younis, Gaza, earlier this month © Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu/Getty Images
Many Palestinians say they’ve tried countless ways to leave, to no avail. A few formal routes exist, including medical evacuation via the World Health Organization and travel organised by embassies for a select few.
This has forced most to turn instead to brokers offering passage out of Gaza for a price, with various schemes advertised online. Gazans said Al-Majd’s website had been circulating on social media for months, and the group even warned of fake pages being set up in its name.
“There were many links being promoted in Gaza, and we signed up for all of them,” Abu Saif said, adding that one group told him to pay $3,000 per person before he realised it was a scam.
Abu Saif eventually settled on Al-Majd after concluding the others were scams. The group says on its website that it was founded in Germany in 2010 to help Muslim communities.
But it came to international attention this month when 153 Gazans spent 12 hours on a plane in Johannesburg, after South African authorities refused to allow them to disembark because their passports had no exit stamps. Al-Majd’s website gives no indication of how many Gazans it has flown out.
An investigation by Israeli newspaper Haaretz found that Al-Majd was linked to Talent Globus, an Estonian-registered company established by Tomer Janar Lind, a dual Israeli-Estonian national. Lind declined to comment.
The Al-Majd operation was reportedly co-ordinated with a department in the Israeli defence ministry set up earlier this year to facilitate the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians.
The department was established in the wake of Trump’s proposal in February — now ostensibly abandoned — to relocate the entire population of Gaza. The idea, enthusiastically embraced by far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, was denounced by rights groups as tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
Donald Trump’s proposal in February — now ostensibly abandoned — to relocate the entire population of Gaza was enthusiastically embraced by far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government © Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
The foreign minister of South Africa, which has advocated for the Palestinian cause, this week called the recent flights part of “a broader agenda to remove Palestinians from Palestine”.
And the Palestinian Authority, which administers limited parts of the occupied West Bank, called on Gazans to avoid falling prey to “human traffickers” and “agents of forced displacement”.
Al-Majd did not respond to a request for comment. But in a recent statement on its website the group said it had been “defamed in the international media”.
Al-Majd said it was set up “by refugees who escaped dictatorial regimes, including refugees from Hamas rule in Gaza”, but did not provide names of its founders or leaders. It denied it was affiliated to the Israeli government or any intelligence agency.
Critics wanted “to strip the people of Gaza of their freedom of choice, to decide for them where they must live, and to force them to remain under immediate danger and daily suffering”, Al-Majd said.
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In South Africa, where the Palestinians have been given 90-day visas, Basheer said charities are for now providing them with free food and shelter. Some Gazans have already flown to other destinations, he said.
“My choices now are either to stay here or to go to Egypt,” said Basheer. “But for the next three months we remain in South Africa to sleep and eat and for all of us to be treated psychologically and physically.”
Abu Ahmed, who lives in a tent in central Gaza with his wife and children, is still waiting his turn to leave.
Abu Ahmed, also a pseudonym, registered six months ago with Al-Majd, saying he no longer has a livelihood after the destruction of his home and two shops.
“If the ceasefire holds and there is reconstruction, I would want to stay,” he said. “I only registered for the children because I want them to be able to go to school. But the older ones insist they will go anywhere as soon as the crossings have opened. I want to keep the family together.”