- Bashir calls his trip out of Gaza to South Africa ‘a survival necessity,’ not a decision to resettle abroad

- ‘My family, my relatives, my home — everything is there. When things improve, we will return.’

ISTANBUL

Browsing the internet for a way out of the Gaza Strip to flee daily Israeli bombardment, Bashir, a displaced civilian in Rafah city, found an organization called Al-Majd Europe offering him the chance to leave the battered enclave.

When he tried a number for the organization he found on the US social media company Facebook, a Palestinian man called Moayad answered him from Indonesia.

Moayad told him that he was flown out of Gaza by Al-Majd to Indonesia, where he became a representative for Palestinian families wishing to leave the Strip.

Bashir, who did not give his full name, was told that he could leave Gaza for Indonesia for a fee of $1,400 per seat.

“All I had was $,6000,” Bashir told Anadolu in an exclusive interview. “I paid the money because our life in Gaza is hell.”

“I lost my home, my furniture, my car — everything I owned. I left Gaza with only four mattresses and two plates.”

He was given the bank account of a young man from the Zaqout family to transfer the money. Once he did, Bashir received instructions to get prepared.

His first message came at 10 am local time, directing him to head to Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Another message came at 10 pm asking him to proceed to Fish-Fresh restaurant in western Khan Younis near a point of the Red Cross at 3 am.

Arriving there, Bashir and other passengers found three buses waiting. He boarded bus no. 2 and was driven to the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza.

Under Israeli control

At the terminal, Bashir found no representative of Al-Majd. Though he did not see any Israeli soldiers around, his trip was entirely under army control.

“You cannot see the army, but they control everything,” Bashir said.

Passengers were given instructions by representatives of Shaheibar company, a Gaza-based firm, to take off their shoes and jackets. They were only allowed to carry medicine.

Bashir and other passengers were given wristbands that remained until they reached Ramon Airport in southern Israel.

“They put our passports in a device and checked it, but they did not stamp them,” Bashir recounted.

Bashir said he thought that their destination would be Jakarta, as he was told by the Indonesia-based representative of Al-Majd Europe. They, however, were told that the Palestinian Authority had stopped issuing travel permits in Jakarta, prompting the organizers to switch their destination quietly.

“They changed the destination to South Africa — and they didn’t tell anyone,” Bashir said.

Displacement

After a four-and-a-half-hour drive to Ramon Airport, the Gazan passengers boarded a flight to Nairobi, where they received new tickets and switched planes to travel onward to South Africa.

“We entered South Africa without any problems,” he said.

Bashir said his group received hotel details via WhatsApp and stayed for a week before being assisted by the charity organization Gift of the Givers, which he described as generous and responsive.

“They helped us with everything we needed,” he said.

His daughter followed him in the next flight for $2,000, but her trip faced a dramatically different situation.

“The moment her flight landed, South African police boarded the flight,” he recalled. “They interrogated my daughter and all other passengers for 15 hours and wanted to send them back to Kenya.”

South African authorities suspected that the flight was part of a scheme to displace Palestinians from their land. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered an investigation into the body behind the chartered flight.

However, South Africa granted a 90-day visa exemption to the 153 Palestinians aboard the flight.

The website of Al-Majd Europe claims that it was founded in Germany in 2010 and maintains offices in East Jerusalem. However, an investigation by the Israeli daily Haaretz found that it is actually registered in Estonia and operates through a front consulting company. The website itself has no address or phone number, providing just a location in Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem.

The organization is run by Tomer Janar Lind, who holds dual Israeli-Estonian citizenship. According to Haaretz, Lind worked with an Israeli military unit charged with the forced transfer of Palestinians from Gaza to facilitate several such flights.

Survival

Bashir called his secret trip out of Gaza to South Africa “a survival necessity”, not a decision to resettle abroad.

“We did not sign any paper, or a ‘no-return’ paper, nothing,” he said.

“If someone called me … and asked, ‘Do you want to travel?’ I would say yes. People in Gaza say: take me out of suffering, genocide, and hell.

He said the Israeli army has turned the entire Gaza Strip into rubble.

“Rafah has been wiped out completely. Not a single house remains,” he said. “Everything is destroyed in Khan Younis, Rafah, and Gaza.”

The Israeli army has killed more than 69,000 people, mostly women and children, injured over 170,000 others, and reduced the enclave to rubble since October 2023. The assault came to a halt under a ceasefire agreement that took effect on Oct. 10.

According to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, nearly 40,000 Palestinians have left the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli war on the enclave.

Bashir said he still plans to return to Gaza one day.

“My family, my relatives, my home — everything is there. When things improve, we will return.”