Gaza’s Silent Exodus: How a Hidden Network Is Emptying Gaza

For decades, displacement has been woven into the fabric of Israeli policy toward Palestinians, resurfacing today in a new, polished guise. Ultranationalist figures like Itamar Ben Gvir have openly celebrated the idea of “voluntary migration,” urging foreign governments to absorb Palestinians while insisting the plan is humanitarian. Yet behind this rhetoric lies a familiar aim: to thin Gaza’s population and reshape the land’s demography. What officials sell as relief increasingly resembles a modern iteration of an old project, quietly moving Palestinians off their ancestral soil while calling it a choice.

For months, a quiet exodus has been taking place from the Gaza Strip, quiet not because it is small, but because it has been orchestrated in the shadows. Under the banner of “voluntary migration,” a murky operation involving an unregistered organisation, private brokers, and Israeli state bodies has spirited Palestinians out of Gaza and flown them to far-flung destinations such as Kenya, Indonesia, and South Africa.

It is being framed by Israeli officials as humanitarian relief. But emerging evidence and an investigation from Haaretz suggest that the operation, opaque in its financing, misleading in its public face, and deeply entangled with Israeli authorities, may represent something far more unsettling: a methodical effort to reduce the Palestinian population of Gaza, carried out through intermediaries who exploit the desperation of a besieged people.

A Mysterious Organisation With No Footprint

The organisation at the centre of this controversy, calling itself Al-Majd Europe, presents as a humanitarian NGO founded in Germany with offices in East Jerusalem. Yet no trace of it exists in either jurisdiction. There is no registration, no official filings, and no public leadership.

The only name that consistently appears across corporate records is Tomer Janar Lind, an Israeli-Estonian entrepreneur who founded a company in Estonia called Talent Globus. That company, barely a year old, quietly served as the administrative backbone of Al-Majd. Its online presence, until recently, consisted of vague recruitment promises, generic stock images, disconnected phone numbers and international addresses that lead nowhere.

IMAGE: LinkedIn profile of Tomer Janar Lind before changes (Source: LinkedIn/Haaretz)

Despite this dubious profile, Al-Majd has been able to collect thousands of dollars from Palestinians seeking a way out of Gaza. Applicants typically pay between $1,500 and $2,700, transferring funds through informal channels. In return, they receive instructions via WhatsApp from numbers believed to be based in Israel. Communication is terse, anonymous, and offers no verifiable assurance of the organisation’s legitimacy.

No office, no public leadership, no accountability, yet somehow it operates with the ease of an agency enjoying official protection.

Inside the Journey: From Gaza to Ramon Airport

The process begins inside Gaza, where Al-Majd’s website encourages residents to enter their details. Once accepted and after payment is made, individuals are added to WhatsApp groups where assertive, faceless coordinators issue instructions: where to meet, what documents to bring, what to leave behind.

On departure day, dozens gather at designated points, usually in central or southern Gaza, where they are placed onto buses that travel toward Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing. There, Israeli forces conduct security screenings before escorting the group to Ramon Airport, located near the southern city of Eilat.

From there, chartered planes, often Romanian carriers, lift Palestinians to third countries, such as Budapest or Nairobi, where they transfer onto additional flights paid for by brokers whose identities remain unclear.

That such an operation is allowed to run repeatedly through a heavily militarised border, through an Israeli-controlled crossing, and via Israel’s own airport, raises an obvious question: who is facilitating this from within the state?

The Israeli Link: A Government Bureau in the Shadows

According to investigations by Israeli journalists, Israel’s Voluntary Migration Bureau, housed inside the Ministry of Defence, has been referring organisations, including Al-Majd, to COGAT, the military unit that administers Israel’s policies in the occupied territories.

This Bureau was established in early 2024 after political leaders, including the prime minister, began publicly discussing the prospect of Palestinians leaving Gaza and “starting over” elsewhere. Prior to the Bureau’s creation, exit approvals for Palestinians were rare and heavily scrutinised. Now, according to sources quoted in Israeli media, denials have become the exception rather than the rule.

Israeli authorities, for their part, insist that they merely “coordinate” departures with foreign governments when individuals hold valid visas or dual citizenship. But the involvement of an unregistered entity funded through cash transfers and WhatsApp chats goes far beyond bureaucratic coordination. It suggests a parallel system, one that benefits from official access but operates without official oversight.

A Plane Full of Questions

The operation burst into global attention last week, when a chartered plane carrying 153 Palestinians landed unexpectedly in Johannesburg. Passengers had travelled from Gaza to Israel, then to Kenya, before boarding an aircraft chartered by a little-known broker and operated by the South African carrier “Lift“.

The arrival immediately triggered an alarm. Initially, the Authorities were reluctant to let passengers disembark. The issue, officials said, was documentation. Many passengers lacked clear entry papers, had no Israeli exit stamps, and could not explain who organised their travel or who was paying for their onward arrangements.

South Africa, a vocal critic of Israeli policy, launched an investigation. President Cyril Ramaphosa confirmed publicly that his intelligence services and immigration authorities were examining the circumstances of the flight, saying the situation was “mysterious” and “deeply troubling”.

Humanitarian groups in South Africa later stepped in to secure temporary accommodation for the Palestinians, while others arranged onward travel. But the immediate humanitarian relief did little to quiet the disturbing implications of how and why the group had been transported there in the first place.

South Africa on High Alert Ahead of G20 as Palestinian Flights Spark Security Concerns

According to the South African outlet, Sunday World, South Africa is on high alert after intelligence indicated that four more planes carrying Palestinians could land in the country ahead of the G20 summit. Officials condemned what they call “ambush tactics” following a recent flight carrying 153 Palestinians that arrived without proper Israeli departure stamps, forcing border authorities to keep passengers on board. The Department of Transport is now scrutinizing foreign operator permits to prevent unplanned landings, while military and police forces have been mobilised to safeguard national sovereignty. By providing asylum, South Africa reinforces its leadership within the Global South and challenges Western powers aligned with Israel, Transport Minister Barbara Greecy confirmed.

“Agents of Displacement”: Palestinian Officials Sound the Alarm

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sharply condemned the scheme. In a statement, it warned that Gaza residents were being targeted by “agents of displacement, human-trafficking networks, and exploitation rings” posing as humanitarian groups.

Officials described Al-Majd as “misleading, unregistered, and predatory,” accusing it of exploiting war-ravaged families’ desperation by charging thousands of dollars for tickets to destinations they often did not even know in advance.

For Palestinian authorities, the moral stakes could not be clearer: what Israel and its intermediaries call “voluntary migration” is, under present conditions, inherently coercive. Gazans are fleeing a devastated territory, one where bombardment, starvation, and infrastructure collapse give them few viable alternatives.

To present their departure as a free choice, officials argue, is to ignore the context: people drowning will grab any rope, even one held by those who pushed them into the water.

A Displacement Strategy by Another Name?

Human rights analysts are increasingly describing this as part of a depopulation strategy, a way to thin Gaza’s civilian population without formally ordering expulsions.

It is not a new idea. For decades, far-right Israeli politicians have floated proposals for encouraging, facilitating, or pressuring Palestinians to leave Gaza. What is new is an official government bureau, operating from within the Ministry of Defence, that interfaces with groups arranging such departures.

By outsourcing the operation to a technically “private” organisation, the state maintains plausible deniability while benefiting from the demographic outcome. And for Palestinians, the result is the same: displacement, dislocation, and the potential permanent loss of their homeland.

The Human Dimension: A One-Way Journey

Personal accounts paint a harrowing picture. Passengers describe being shepherded through the process with minimal information. Some did not know where they were headed until after their planes landed. Others believed they were flying to Europe, only to find themselves in Nairobi or Johannesburg instead.

Once outside Gaza, many face legal limbo. Without proper exit stamps or recognised documentation, asylum claims become complicated, residency uncertain, and future mobility precarious.

Families have been separated. Elderly passengers have fallen ill in transit. Children have crossed continents without understanding that they may never see home again.

The Displacement of Gaza, Disguised as Choice

The machinery behind Gaza’s secretive emigration pipeline is not a humanitarian corridor; it is a pressure valve engineered in the shadows. It leverages desperation, conceals its ownership, and relies on the infrastructure and approval of a state that stands to benefit strategically from Palestinian depopulation.

By labelling the process “voluntary,” Israeli authorities cloak a displacement program in the language of freedom. But when the choice is between an unlivable homeland and an unknown exile, the word voluntary serves only those who designed the conditions, not those suffering under them.

What is unfolding is not merely a logistical operation; it is a transformation of Gaza itself. And unless scrutinised, challenged, and brought into daylight, it may become a template for future displacement, one ticketed, processed, and flown out under the guise of humanitarianism.

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Yashraj Sharma reports for Al Jazeera…

What’s the shadowy organisation taking Gaza Palestinians to South Africa?

Details have emerged about the controversial scheme to take Palestinians out of Gaza, run by Al-Majd Europe.

On Thursday morning, a chartered plane carrying 153 Palestinians from war-torn Gaza – many without the required travel documents – landed at an airport near Johannesburg, leaving South African officials “blindsided”.

After nearly 12 hours of scrambling, the group was allowed to disembark into the care of a local charity organisation. More details have emerged about the scheme run by “Al-Majd Europe”, through which activists argue Israel is advancing its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.

The Palestinian passengers were charged a hefty sum of money by the organisation, which says on its website that it coordinates “evacuations from conflict zones”.

Here is everything we know about the group’s transit so far and who’s behind Al-Majd Europe.

VIDEO: Israeli-Estonian citizen is behind shadowy organisation arranging flights out of Gaza: Report (Al Jazeera)

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What happened in South Africa?

The plane full of people sat on a runway for nearly 12 hours while South African authorities tried to figure out why they did not have exit stamps or slips from when they left Gaza, according to officials from South Africa’s border agency.

They were also not sure when asked by immigration where they would stay or how long they planned to be in South Africa. The government allowed them to leave the plane after the charity organisation Gift of the Givers offered to accommodate them.

Officials said 23 Palestinians flew to other countries, without adding any more details.

“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 said Friday, adding “it does seem like they were being flushed out” of Gaza. South Africa’s intelligence services are investigating the incident.

VIDEO: Questions over how Palestinians from Gaza arrived in South Africa (Source: Al Jazeera)

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What is the company that flew them to South Africa?

Behind the flight is Al-Majd Europe, which is accused of acting in coordination with Israeli authorities.

The Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported on Sunday that the organisation is led by a dual Israeli-Estonian national named Tomer Janar Lind. The daily said that Lind worked with a unit in the Israeli military charged with the forced transfer of Palestinians from Gaza to facilitate several such flights.

This unit, which is named the Voluntary Emigration Bureau, was set up in early 2025 under the Israeli Ministry of Defence to enact a policy of pushing out Palestinians from their homeland. According to the Haaretz report, Lind does not deny arranging flights for Palestinians but refused to divulge more information.

“This is not at all a random event,” said Oroub el-Abed, associate professor in international migration and refugee studies at Birzeit University in Ramallah. “This is very much part of a long colonial pattern, very systematic dispossession of indigenous Palestinians that has been perpetuated by Zionist Israelis, and they want to empty the land from its indigenous people, using multi-faceted approaches,” she told Al Jazeera.

The Al-Majd Europe website says it was founded in 2010 in Germany, and the homepage has a pop-up warning about individuals pretending to be its agents, sharing phone numbers of “legitimate representatives”.

But the site itself has no address or phone number, providing just a location in Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem. However, Al Jazeera was not able to find an office there. The website domain, almajdeurope.org, was only registered in February this year, while several links on the site lead nowhere. The email listed, info@almajdeurope.org, bounces back an automated message saying it does not exist. Namecheap, which registered the domain, has been cited in several cybersecurity reports on online fraud because of its low-cost, easy sign-up process.

Al Jazeera has also learned that many people were told to pay via bank transfers to personal, not organisational, accounts.

VIDEO: Investigators probe group that arranged ‘trafficking’ flights out of Gaza (Source: Al Jazeera)

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Does Al-Majd Europe do what it says it does?

Among the links that work is a page with four “Impact Stories”.

One post about “Mona”, a 29-year-old from Aleppo, Syria, is dated March 22, 2023, even though the website was only registered 10 months ago. The narrative, written in “Mona’s” voice, expresses gratitude to Al-Majd for moving her and her mother “to a safe place” when they felt threatened in Lebanon, where they fled to in 2013.

The photo, however, shows Abeer Khayat, who was 33 when photographed by journalist Madeline Edwards in December 2024 in Tripoli, Lebanon, for Middle East Eye.

The online form reads: “For Gaza residents currently inside the Gaza Strip only!”

“Do you aspire to travel and start a new life? We are here to help you!”

IMAGE: Left: Al-Majd’s story about ‘Mona’, who it claimed to have removed from Tripoli, Lebanon, in 2023; Right: The photo is of Abeer Khayat, photographed in Tripoli for the Middle East Eye in 2024

How did people end up on that flight?

The Palestinian families, with a pregnant woman among them, boarded the plane not knowing their final destination, having paid Al-Majd $1,400 to $2,000 each – the price for children the same as adults.

Loay Abu Saif, who was on board the plane along with his wife and children, told Al Jazeera on Friday that he had heard about Al-Majd through a social media advertisement. Saif said he hadn’t known when they would leave Gaza until a day before, when he was told passengers could only take a small bag, a mobile phone, and some cash.

They were taken by bus from southern Gaza’s Rafah to the Karem Abu Salem crossing (known as Kerem Shalom in Israel), where they were checked, then transferred to Israel’s Ramon airport, without Israeli authorities stamping their travel documents.

(Al Jazeera)

Another person interviewed by Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity said: “The … applicant must [have a young] family. [Then] the names are sent for security screening. Once that’s completed, and if the family is approved, they’re asked to pay,” he said.

“There had been prior coordination with the Israeli army for the buses to enter Rafah,” he said. “The process was only routine.”

The group left from Ramon in a Romanian aircraft and transited through Nairobi, Kenya, before landing in Johannesburg.

VIDEO: Controversial transfer of Palestinians: South Africa investigating unexpected plane arrival (Source: Aljazeera)

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Have there been similar flights before?

Haaretz, the Israeli daily, reported that there had been a similar flight on May 27. It said some 57 Palestinians from Gaza boarded buses that took them to the Ramon airport via the Karem Abu Salem crossing.

According to Haaretz, the group then boarded a Romanian chartered plane operated by Fly Lili. The plane went to Budapest, and from there they continued to Indonesia and Malaysia. Al-Majd’s website also claims to have facilitated a trip for “a group of doctors working in hospitals in the Gaza Strip” who it flew to Indonesia “for further studies and advanced medical training”. However, this post is dated April 28, 2024.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify the authenticity of this post and a photograph of the group in it.

Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman, who alleged that Al-Majd was one of “Israel’s front organisations”, told The Associated Press news agency that this was the second plane to arrive in South Africa. Another plane arrived with more than 170 Palestinians on board on October 28, but that flight was not announced by authorities.

What did Palestine say?

The Palestinian embassy in South Africa said in a statement that the flight was arranged by “an unregistered and misleading organization 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”.

The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned Palestinians, especially those in the Gaza Strip, about networks that seek to remove them from their homes in line with Israeli interests.

Video: Israel linked to “forced migration” with South Africa flights (Source: Al Jazeera)

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Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2025/11/17/gazas-silent-exodus-how-a-hidden-network-is-emptying-gaza/