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South Africa has allowed more than 150 Palestinian airline passengers to disembark, after they were kept on a plane for almost 12 hours by the country’s border police, authorities said.
South Africa’s Ministry of Home Affairs authorised the passengers to get off the plane on Thursday night after a local humanitarian organisation guaranteed to provide the passengers with accommodation during their stay in South Africa if needed.
“Given that Palestinians are eligible for 90-day visa-exempt travel to South Africa, they have been processed as per normal and will be required to adhere to all conditions of entry,” South Africa’s Border Management Authority (BMA) said in a statement late on Thursday.
The chartered plane carrying 153 Palestinians landed shortly after 8am (06:00 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 from the aircraft after it was discovered they “did not have the customary departure stamps in their passports”. The passengers also did not indicate how long they intended 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 travellers expressed an intention to apply for asylum, they were initially denied entry,” it added.
News that the Palestinians were forced to wait on the tarmac at the airport for hours reportedly caused outrage among the public in South Africa, which is a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and has led the charge at the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israel for perpetrating genocide in Gaza.
The order to finally allow the Palestinian passengers to leave the plane came after the country’s Home Affairs Ministry received a commitment from a humanitarian aid organisation – Gift of the Givers – to accommodate the visitors during their stay.
A total of 130 Palestinians subsequently entered the country, while 23 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 had travelled from Kenya.
Founder of Gift of the Givers, Imtiaz Sooliman, told public broadcaster SABC that he did not know who had chartered the aircraft and that a first plane carrying 176 Palestinians had landed in Johannesburg on October 28, with some of the passengers departing for other countries.
“The families of this first group told us yesterday their family members are coming on a second plane, and nobody knew about that plane,” Sooliman said.
“Those people are really distraught coming from two years of genocide,” Sooliman said of the passengers.
Based on “feedback” from those who have arrived already in South Africa, Sooliman said Israel appears to be “removing people from 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 post on social media.
Other humanitarian groups are also now offering to provide support for the Palestinian visitors, he added.
Nigel Branken, a South African social worker who assisted those held on the plane, said the passengers from Gaza had told him of being ordered by Israeli authorities to leave all their belongings behind before boarding an unmarked plane at an Israeli air force base.
“Very clearly all the marks of Israel involved in this operation to take people…to displace them,” Branken told Al Jazeera.
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