Asia Pacific Report
An Australian author whose award-winning book about Israel’s military and surveillance industry has swept the world is scathing about a controversial Gaza transit company.
Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book about how Israel tests arms and surveillance technologies in the illegal occupation of Palestine, says the shadowy scheme carrying Palestinians to South Africa or other countries was waging “disaster capitalism”.
He said the Al-Majd Europe outfit that reportedly flew 153 people from Gaza to South Aftica could have been operating for weeks or months before being noticed.
- READ MORE: ‘Trip of suffering’: Gaza evacuee details 24-hour journey to South Africa
- Other Gaza reports
Commenting on this mysterious flight carrying people from Gaza that transited through Kenya’s capital Nairobi and ended up in South Africa, Loewenstein told Al Jazeera from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta that there had been rumours about companies making such flights.
He said such flights apparently “requires Israeli permission as well as other countries’ permissions”.
“South Africa was apparently the final destination, considering it is one of the most pro-Palestine countries on the planet,” he said.
Lowenstein said there were “no names or associations” on the “incredibly strange” company website, which “almost looks like it was created by AI”, calling what it does “disaster capitalism” – a theme of one of his earlier books.
‘Making money out of misery’
“This is the concept of people making money out of other people’s misery,” Loewenstein said.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Foreign Affairs Ministry has warned against groups exploiting Gaza’s humanitarian crisis for human trafficking in the wake of the mysterious arrival of 153 people from Gaza in South Africa this week.
The ministry warned that “companies and entities that mislead our people, incite them to deportation or displacement or engage in human trafficking and exploit their tragic and catastrophic humanitarian conditions will bear the legal consequences of their unlawful actions and will be subject to prosecution and accountability.”
In a statement, the ministry also urged Palestinian families in Gaza “to exercise caution and avoid falling prey to human trafficking networks, blood merchants, and displacement agents”.
The departure of people from Gaza to South Africa was closely coordinated with Israeli authorities.
Everything started with an advertised post from the Al-Majd Europe organisation promising to safely evacuate Palestinian families outside the Gaza Strip, so many Palestinians filled in their applications and were waiting for a call from the organisation.
The situation in Gaza has pushed Palestinians to pay whatever they could to leave the Strip.
‘They lost everything’
“They have lost everything. They lost their houses, and they believe that they do not have any future here,” an Al Jazeera reporter said.
The television channel also said Gazans who used the transit company were forced to pay up to US$5000 to enable them to cross the so-called “yellow line” and be driven from Karem Abu Salem crossing to Ramon airport in southern Israel.
This is a risky move because at least 200 Palestinians have been killed since the October ceasefire for crossing the yellow line. So the operation would have required Israeli military cooperation.
The Gazans were then flown to Nairobi in Kenyan on a Romanian aircraft and transferred to a flight to Johannesburg where border officials held them for 12 hours because they reportedly did not have Israeli exit stamps in their passports.
