South Africa lets 153 Palestinians disembark following 12-hour plane ordeal
South Africa has allowed more than 150 Palestinian airline passengers to disembark after they were held on a plane for nearly 12 hours by the country’s border police, authorities said.
South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs allowed the passengers to disembark the plane on Thursday evening after a local humanitarian organization guaranteed to provide the passengers with accommodation during their stay in South Africa if necessary.
“As the Palestinians are eligible for 90 days of visa-free travel to South Africa, they were treated normally and will be required to comply with all entry requirements,” South Africa’s Border Management Authority (BMA) said in a statement late Thursday.
The chartered plane carrying 153 Palestinians landed shortly after 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Thursday morning at OR Tambo International Airport, which serves the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria.
According to the BMA, the Palestinian passengers were not allowed to disembark the plane after it was discovered that they “did not have the usual departure stamps in their passports.” The passengers also did not indicate how long they planned 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 travelers expressed an intention to seek asylum, they were initially refused entry,” the text adds.
The news that Palestinians were forced to wait on the airport tarmac for hours reportedly sparked outrage among the South African public, which is a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause and led the charge to the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israel for carry out genocide in Gaza.
The order to finally allow Palestinian passengers off the plane came after the country’s Interior Ministry received a commitment from a humanitarian aid organization – Gift of the Givers – to house the visitors during their stay.
A total of 130 Palestinians subsequently entered the country, while 23 were transferred from South Africa to other destinations from the airport, according to the BMA.
The AFP news agency said the plane was a charter flight operated by South African airline Global Airways and was coming from Kenya.
Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman told public broadcaster SABC that he did not know who chartered the plane and that a first plane carrying 176 Palestinians had landed in Johannesburg on October 28, with some passengers leaving for other countries.
“The families in that first group told us yesterday that their family members were arriving on a second plane, and no one knew about that plane,” Sooliman said.
“These people are really distraught after two years of genocide,” Sooliman said of the passengers.
Based on “feedback” from those who have already arrived in South Africa, Sooliman said Israel appears to be “taking people out of 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 social media post.
Other humanitarian groups are now also offering to provide support to Palestinian visitors, he added.
Nigel Branken, a South African social worker who helped those detained on the plane, said passengers from Gaza told him they were ordered by Israeli authorities to leave all their belongings behind before boarding an unmarked plane at an Israeli air base.
“Very clearly, all the brands in Israel are involved in this operation to take people…to move them,” Branken told Al Jazeera.
