Even though the ceasefire in Gaza orchestrated by US President Donald Trump seems to be holding for the most part, ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people on their land maintains at record levels. Israeli forces have allegedly displaced thousands of civilians in the West Bank in 2025, while attacks from violent settlers are at an all-time high. Additionally, the mysterious arrival of a chartered flight carrying Palestinians from Gaza to South Africa has ignited serious questions about whether a secret, systemic effort is underway to depopulate the war-ravaged strip. The involvement by outsourced private intermediaries operating from abroad with Estonian links is troubling. A murky network of brokers, shadowy companies and cross-border coordinators have emerged as a new model for involuntary displacement of Palestinians.
Alexandra Dubsky
21 January 2026
When a plane carrying some 153 Palestinian passengers mysteriously landed at South Africa’s Tambo International Airport in mid-November 2025, it was welcomed by total oblivious local authorities who had never been informed of the carrier’s landing plans.
The passengers were consequently kept inside the plane for 12 hours due to a lack of required documents, their passports had not received an exit stamp from Israel when leaving the territory. According to local media, the Palestinians on board did not know where they were being taken once they had left the Jewish state, but most were now expected to apply for asylum in South Africa.
There was no further explanation of how the Palestinians boarded the flight, but some clues were hinting on how the process started, according to reports by local broadcaster Al Jazeera.
There is a link advertised on different social media platforms, from an organization called Al-Majd Europe. Via an online form, Palestinians fill in their names, where they are working, and where they want to go, said the report. They then get a call from one of the people who work with Al-Majd Europe. They are asked to go to a bus station stop in Gaza City, a bus then takes them to the Karem Abu Salem crossing [called Kerem Shalom in Israel], the report continued. Al Jazeera has been unable to independently confirm how the Palestinians boarded the plane.
The Israeli paper Haaretz reported that the Al-Majd Europe group, managed by an Israeli Estonian dual national named Tomer Janar Lind, has been arranging seats for Palestinians from Gaza on charter flights to several distant destinations including Indonesia, Malaysia and South Africa, charging roughly $2000 per passenger including children and babies, for the entire last year (2025).
Although the group’s website claims that it was established in Germany and operates offices in East Jerusalem, it is in fact registered in Estonia and functions through a front-facing consulting firm.
According to Haaretz, Israel’s Defense Ministry directed the organization’s work to the military liaison agency COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories), which facilitates the departures of Palestinians from Gaza.
One flight in October 2025 was a Romanian-chartered aircraft that transported 57 Palestinians from Gaza to Budapest, Hungary, before continuing to Indonesia and Malaysia.
Lind has not denied involvement in organizing the flights but has declined to comment further.
The Palestinian embassy in South Africa condemned Al-Majd Europe as an “unauthorized and deceptive group that took advantage of the dire humanitarian situation facing Palestinians in Gaza, misled families, collected money from them, and arranged their travel through irregular and irresponsible means.”
German news channel Deutsche Welle (DW) released excerpts of communications with an individual linked to the company, who said under the conditions of anonymity that he “is helping people to stay alive in the Gaza strip. This is not forced migration.”
The Al-Majd Europe representative identifies as “Omar,” his phone number appeared on the website. Omar told the DW via a WhatsApp conversation that he was a Palestinian man based in Jerusalem. He emphasized that claims tying his company to the Israeli government were fabricated by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority who oppose Palestinians leaving Gaza.
Omar added that enabling Palestinians to depart from Gaza through an Israeli airport inevitably requires coordination with Israeli bodies, including the COGAT. He stressed that he was just helping people in Gaza, saying his aim was to assist those “who want to live, not die in the strip.”
DW reported that Omar however did not answer “more difficult questions,” including his relationship with Lind, how he connected with international and Israeli companies, and why many of the links on the Al-Majd website are inactive. He further didn’t offer clarification about the company’s funding and claimed he “could not remember” how many Palestinians he had assisted in leaving Gaza.
Some 33 km away from Gaza, the West Bank is experiencing its most violent year in terms of settler violence and forced displacement. According to a Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) report Israeli forces in 2025 during “Operation Iron Wall” forcibly displaced about 32 000 Palestinians from refugee camps in the West Bank, destroying hundreds of homes, blocking their return and failing to provide safe evacuation routes, shelter or humanitarian support – actions that the HRW argues violate international law, amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including forced transfer and persecution.
More than 1000 attacks by brutal settlers have been recorded at the West Bank in 2025 alone, according to UN statistics. “These settlers saw the 7th of October not only as a tragedy but also as a great chance to finally have a card blanche to assault Palestinians,” explained Israeli journalist and Haaretz contributor Gideon Levy. Israeli solders often just stand by, failing to protect the civilians from the vicious attacks.
UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese warned that Palestinians are acting under pressure in all aspects of their lives, including when they board planes and relocate elsewhere, emphasizing that their choices are made under force.
Speaking at a press conference hosted at the European Parliament in November, Albanese addressed the question about the transfer of Palestinians to South Africa and whether this reflects an Israeli effort to depopulate Gaza. “I share the concern,” she said, pointing out that Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has repeatedly promoted the idea of “voluntary migration,” and that the recent transfers appear consistent with this idea.
Albanese stressed that nothing about the current situation can be considered voluntary. “What Israel is forcing Palestinians into is the opposite of voluntary,” she argued. She added that any pause in military operations that is not accompanied by the enforcement of international law risks enabling Israel to pursue objectives it could not achieve through what she described as genocide, namely the continued process of ethnic cleansing by other means.
“Many of those who have traveled to South Africa didn’t even know where they were going and they didn’t have anything else than their passport with them. So, it’s extremely serious,” she concluded.
