South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs authorised the passengers to get off the plane on Thursday night after a local humanitarian organisation guaranteed to provide the passengers with accommodation during their stay in South Africa if needed.
The chartered plane carrying 153 Palestinians landed shortly after 8am (06:00 GMT) on Thursday morning at OR Tambo International Airport, which serves the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria. The passengers were kept on the aircraft by border police as they did not have departure stamps from Israel on their passports.The passengers were finally allowed to disembark 12 hours later.
“Given that Palestinians are eligible for 90-day visa-exempt travel to South Africa, they have been processed as per normal and will be required to adhere to all conditions of entry,” South Africa’s Border Management Authority (BMA) said in a statement late on Thursday.
The AFP news agency said the plane was a charter flight operated by South African airline Global Airways and had transited in Nairobi, Kenya.
“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 told journalists on Friday, adding that his government would investigate “the details”.
“We obviously need to look at their origins, where it started, the reason why they have been brought here … because they didn’t have any documentation,” he added.
He said the group had been admitted into the country “out of compassion”. But he added that “it does seem like they were being flushed out” of the Gaza Strip.
News that the Palestinians were forced to wait on the tarmac at the airport for hours reportedly caused outrage among the public in South Africa, which is a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and has led the charge at the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israel for perpetrating genocide in Gaza.
According to the BMA, the Palestinian passengers “did not have the customary departure stamps in their passports”. The passengers also did not indicate how long they intended to stay in South Africa or the address of their accommodation, the BMA said.
“Following their failure to pass the immigration test and given that none of the travellers expressed an intention to apply for asylum, they were initially denied entry,” it added.
The order to finally allow the passengers to leave the plane came after the country’s Home Affairs ministry received a commitment from a humanitarian aid organisation – Gift of the Givers – to accommodate the visitors during their stay.
A total of 130 Palestinians subsequently entered the country, while 23 transferred from South Africa to other destinations, from the airport, according to the BMA.
Al Jazeera’s Fahmida Miller, reporting from Johannesburg, said the Palestinians on board did not know where they were being taken once they had left Israel, but most are expected to apply for asylum.
“A few others have also continued their journey from South Africa to other countries through the course of today,” she said. “However, others have been accommodated here.”
Founder of Gift of the Givers, Imtiaz Sooliman, told public broadcaster SABC that he did not know who had chartered the aircraft and that a first plane carrying 176 Palestinians had landed in Johannesburg on October 28, with some of the passengers departing for other countries.
“The families of this first group told us yesterday their family members are coming on a second plane, and nobody knew about that plane,” Sooliman said.“Those people are really distraught coming from two years of genocide,” Sooliman said of the passengers.
Based on “feedback” from those who have arrived already in South Africa, Sooliman said Israel appears to be “removing people from Gaza … and sending them on chartered planes” without stamping their passports.
“Israel deliberately did not stamp the passports of these poor people to exacerbate their suffering in a foreign country,” he added in a post on social media
Other humanitarian groups are also now offering to provide support for the Palestinian visitors, he added.
Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Gaza City on Friday, said there was no clear explanation of how the Palestinians boarded the flight, but there were some clues on how the process started.
“There is a link … advertised on different social media platforms, called Al-Majd Europe. In a survey, Palestinians fill in their names, where they’re working, and where they want to go,” she explained.
“They get a call from one of the people who works with Al-Majd Europe. They are asked to go to a bus station stop in Gaza City, and this bus … travels to Karem Abu Salem crossing [called Kerem Shalom in Israel].” Al Jazeera has been unable to independently confirm how the Palestinians boarded the plane.
The Palestinian embassy in South Africa said on Thursday that the travel “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 in an irregular and irresponsible manner”.
Nigel Branken, a South African social worker who assisted those held on the plane, said the passengers from Gaza had told him of being ordered by Israeli authorities to leave all their belongings behind before boarding an unmarked plane at an Israeli air force base.
“Very clearly, all the marks of Israel involved in this operation to take people … to displace them,” Branken told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, Jordan, said Israel was yet to comment on the issue, but it was unlikely the Palestinians who left did so without “Israeli coordination”.
“Nobody can approach that imaginary yellow line without being shot at. These people had to be bused through the yellow line, through the 53 percent of Gaza that the Israeli army still controls and is operating in out of Gaza, through Israel to the Ramon airport,” she reported.
“The only thing that we’ve seen, as far as reporting is concerned, is that COGAT, the Israeli military command centre that is in charge of the daily lives of Palestinians of the occupied West Bank and Gaza, has said that Israel is facilitating those who wish to leave.”