News- Middle East: South African activists say Israel is using a shadowy humanitarian group to force Palestinians out of the besieged Gaza Strip, in the latest form of ethnic cleansing to take place since October 2023.

Media outlets quoting sources reported on Sunday that a plane carrying 153 Palestinians from the blockaded Palestinian territory landed at South Africa's OR Tambo International Airport on November 13.

But the plane was held on the tarmac for about 12 hours, with passengers unable to disembark. This triggered confusion and anger against local authorities.

Within hours, however, activists and South African authorities discovered several irregularities in the way the Palestinians' travel had been organized by a group called Al-Majd Europe.

Activists further found that the evacuees were not in possession of any documentation or paperwork to assist with their processing in the country.

The Palestinians also did not have exit stamps or slips that would normally be issued by Israeli authorities to people leaving Gaza.

More shocking was that several Palestinians said they had embarked on the trip without fully knowing where they were going.

The activists said that the passengers' boarding passes showed a variety of destinations, from India to Malaysia and Indonesia.

Na'eem Jeenah, a long-time activist and scholar based in Johannesburg, told the Middle East Eye that the developments suggested Israel was exploiting Palestinian desperation to quietly advance a policy of forced displacement of Palestinians with the group, acting as a conduit for their removal.

"It is clear to us that Al-Majd is a front for the Israeli entity and the Israeli intelligence, and is a project to aid in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza," Jeenah said. 

It also seemed to showcase an effort to permanently dislodge a professional class - doctors, educators, business people - from remaining in Gaza.

A Palestinian man who said he left Gaza through Al-Majd Europe said there was “strong coordination” between the group and the Israeli army on such displacements.

He told Al Jazeera that he had paid $6,000 to get himself and two family members out of Gaza. “The payments are made through bank applications to the accounts of individual persons, not to an institution,” he said.

Israel had reportedly helped facilitate the transfer of Palestinians from Gaza to the Karem Abu Salem crossing in the southern part of the occupied territories before they were taken to Ramon Airport, where they boarded a flight that took them first to Nairobi, and then Johannesburg.

 Al-Majd Europe was formed in 2010, having been purportedly registered in Germany with headquarters in occupied al-Quds.

Khalid Vawda, an activist with Social Intifada - a group based in Johannesburg - who first raised concerns about the organization in late October when he first encountered it, said it appeared to have emerged out of nowhere.

He said that the group had been advertising its ability to evacuate Palestinians out of Gaza for months on social media.

"None of them suspected anything, because they assumed it was just another avenue to leave Gaza since Rafah is closed," he said.

Families paid different amounts, ranging from $1,500 to $5,000 per person, and were told of a meeting point in Gaza from where the journey would begin on a chartered flight.

"I absolutely think that Israel is preying on Palestinians in Gaza," Vawda said.

"On another level, they are profiting off people who are vulnerable, who have PTSD from two years of genocide, who have seen their loved ones perish," he added.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said there was an investigation to uncover how the Palestinians came to South Africa via a stopover in Nairobi, Kenya.

The Palestinian embassy in South Africa said the flight was arranged by an "unregistered and misleading organisation that exploited the tragic humanitarian conditions of our people in Gaza, deceived families, collected money from them, and facilitated their travel irregularly and irresponsibly".

Despite the so-called ceasefire being implemented in October, Israeli forces continued to sporadically bomb Gaza, with hundreds of Palestinians having been killed over the past few weeks.

More than 80 percent of structures have been destroyed, leaving large swathes of the besieged territory uninhabitable - a situation expected to become catastrophic with the onset of winter. Incoming aid remains slow and insufficient.

Source: Press TV