Israeli authorities say the 153 Palestinians who unexpectedly arrived in South Africa this week had been cleared to travel only after an unnamed third country agreed to receive them, adding a new twist to an episode that has sparked diplomatic questions and public anger in Johannesburg.
Shimi Zuaretz, spokesman for COGAT – the Israeli body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories – told AFP the group was allowed to leave Gaza “after COGAT received approval from a third country to receive them,” though he declined to name the state.
The chartered flight, which routed via Nairobi, landed at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport on Thursday. South African border officials then kept the passengers on board for about 12 hours because they lacked Israeli departure stamps, could not provide local addresses and had not indicated how long they planned to stay.
The group was eventually allowed to disembark after local humanitarian organisation Gift of the Givers offered to accommodate them. The NGO later told South African media it had not chartered the flight – nor an earlier one that brought 176 Gazans on October 28 – and did not know who organised the journeys.
South Africa’s Home Affairs Ministry says 130 of the travellers entered the country on 90-day visa exemptions for Palestinian passport holders, while 23 continued on to other destinations, including countries for which some already held visas.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the circumstances of the trip suggested the passengers were “being flushed out” of Gaza. “These are people from Gaza who somehow mysteriously were put on a plane that passed by Nairobi and came here,” he said, promising a full investigation into how the operation was arranged.
An unnamed Israeli official told AFP that the organisation coordinating the transfer had submitted third-country visas for all evacuees to COGAT before their departure. Zuaretz said COGAT facilitates exits from Gaza for medical patients, dual nationals and “those possessing visas to third countries,” stressing that Israel “bases its decisions solely on requests received from foreign countries.” He added that more than 40,000 Gaza residents have left under such arrangements since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war.
South Africa, which has one of the largest Jewish communities in sub-Saharan Africa but is also a strong backer of the Palestinian cause, has filed a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice over its conduct in Gaza. The strange, opaque flight has now become another flashpoint in that already fraught relationship, as authorities probe whether vulnerable families fleeing war were also exploited by shadowy intermediaries.
