On Thursday morning, a chartered plane carrying 153 Palestinians from war-torn Gaza – many without the required travel documents – landed at an airport near Johannesburg, leaving South African officials “blindsided”.
After nearly 12 hours of scrambling, the group was allowed to disembark into the care of a local charity organisation.
More details have emerged about the scheme run by “Al-Majd Europe”, through which activists argue Israel is advancing its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.
The Palestinian passengers were charged a hefty sum of money by the organisation, which says on its website that it coordinates “evacuations from conflict zones”.
Here is everything we know about the group’s transit so far and who’s behind Al-Majd Europe.
What happened in South Africa?
The plane full of people sat on a runway for nearly 12 hours while South African authorities tried to figure out why they did not have exit stamps or slips from when they left Gaza, according to officials from South Africa’s border agency.
They were also not sure when asked by immigration where they would stay or how long they planned to be in South Africa.
The government allowed them to leave the plane after charity organisation Gift of the Givers offered to accommodate them.
Officials said 23 Palestinians flew to other countries, without adding any more details.
“These are people from Gaza who somehow mysteriously were put on a plane that passed by Nairobi and came here,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Friday.
He added that “it does seem like they were being flushed out” of Gaza. South Africa’s intelligence services are investigating the incident.
What is the company that flew them to South Africa?
Behind the flight is Al-Majd Europe, which is accused of acting in coordination with Israeli authorities.
Loay Abu Saif, who fled Gaza with his wife and children to Johannesburg, told Al Jazeera on Friday that he had heard about it through a social media advertisement.
The Al-Majd Europe website says it was founded in 2010 in Germany, and the homepage has a pop-up warning about individuals pretending to be its agents, sharing phone numbers of “legitimate representatives”.
But the site itself has no address or phone number, providing just a location in Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem. However, Al Jazeera was not able to find an office there.
The website domain, almajdeurope.org, was only registered in February this year, while several links on the site lead nowhere. The email listed, info@almajdeurope.org, bounces back an automated message saying it does not exist.
Namecheap, which registered the domain, has been cited in several cybersecurity reports on online fraud because of its low-cost, easy sign-up process.
Al Jazeera learned that many people were told to pay via bank transfers to personal, not organisational, accounts.
Does Al-Majd Europe do what it says it does?
Among the links that work is a page with four “Impact Stories”.
One post about “Mona”, a 29-year-old from Aleppo, Syria, is dated March 22, 2023, even though the website was only registered 10 months later.
The narrative, written in “Mona’s” voice, expresses gratitude to Al-Majd for moving her and her mother “to a safe place” when they felt threatened in Lebanon, where they fled to in 2013.
The photo, however, shows Abeer Khayat, who was 33 when photographed by journalist Madeline Edwards in December 2024 in Tripoli, Lebanon, for Middle East Eye.
The online form reads: “For Gaza residents currently inside the Gaza Strip only!
“Do you aspire to travel and start a new life? We are here to help you!”
How did people end up on that flight?
The Palestinian families, with a pregnant woman among them, boarded the plane not knowing their final destination, having paid Al-Majd $1,400 to $2,000 each – the price for children the same as adults.
Saif, who was on the plane, said he hadn’t known when they would leave Gaza until a day before, when he was told passengers could only take a small bag, a mobile phone, and some cash.
They were taken by bus from southern Gaza’s Rafah to the Karem Abu Salem crossing (known as Kerem Shalom in Israel), where they were checked, then transferred to Israel’s Ramon Airport, without Israeli authorities stamping their travel documents.
Another person interviewed by Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity said: “The … applicant must [have a young] family. [Then] the names are sent for security screening. Once that’s completed, and if the family is approved, they’re asked to pay,” he said.
“There had been prior coordination with the Israeli army for the buses to enter Rafah,” he said. “The process was only routine.”
The group left from Ramon in a Romanian aircraft and transited through Nairobi, Kenya, before landing in Johannesburg.
Have there been similar flights before?
A man who was on board the plane told Al Jazeera there had been a similar flight to Indonesia in June.
Al-Majd’s website also claims to have facilitated a trip for “a group of doctors working in hospitals in the Gaza Strip” who it flew to Indonesia “for further studies and advanced medical training”. However, this post is dated April 28, 2024.
Al Jazeera could not independently verify the authenticity of this post and a photograph of the group in it.
Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman, who alleged that Al-Majd was one of “Israel’s front organisations”, told AP that this was the second plane to arrive in South Africa.
Another plane arrived with more than 170 Palestinians on board on October 28, but that flight was not announced by authorities.
What did Palestine say?
The Palestinian Embassy in South Africa said in a statement that the flight was arranged by “an unregistered and misleading organization 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”.
