Yesterday, the Border Management Authority denied entry to 153 Palestinians due to incomplete documentation. According to the BMA, the Palestinian passengers were not allowed to disembark from the aircraft as they did not have the customary departure stamps in their passports. The passengers also did not indicate how long they intended to stay in the country or the address of their accommodation. The passengers were later allowed to disembark after nearly 12 hours on the tarmac after Home Affairs received a commitment from Gift of the Givers that it will provide the passengers with accommodation during their stay in South Africa. The organisation’s founder, Imtiaz Sooliman says the situation unfortunately sounds like something very sinister.
“This is not the first flight, this is the second flight. This seems to be a coordinated effort from Israel to carry out a process of ethnic cleansing. People pay a high price to front organisations of Israel and are then taken out of Gaza, moved to Shalom and to the Ramon military base and flown from there to different countries. Most of them in the first plane didn’t even know where they were going to and then of course, there was no exit stamp. So when they get to a foreign country they are further embarrassed, and further put into difficulty like what happened in SA,” he said.
SABC–
