Inside the Israeli-linked flights that are carrying Palestinians out of Gaza

A 19-year-old aspiring college student had been waiting for months to leave Gaza when she finally got a cryptic text message last week: Meet at 5 a.m. at the Fish Fresh restaurant in the border town of Rafah.

- Abeer Ayyoub, Alexandra Wexler & Anat Peled

The trip Shahd Abu Samra had paid for and long anticipated was finally about to happen.

The message didn’t say where she would be going. She didn’t care, she said, as long as it got her out of the battered enclave so she could continue her studies.

Three days later, a plane carrying Abu Samra and 152 other Gazans touched down in South Africa. It was the second plane that appeared to have ferried Gazans to South Africa with the approval of Israeli authorities in recent weeks.

The first landed without incident, but when Abu Samra’s plane arrived, they were held on the plane and interrogated by South African officials for hours.

The Gazans didn’t have easy answers. They weren't able to explain why they had come to South Africa or where they planned to stay, and they had arrived without Israeli exit stamps in their passports or other proof they had left officially.

“A South African policewoman told us that we were like guests who came without knocking on the door,” Abu Samra said.

It wasn’t the way Palestinians usually exit Gaza. Israel's military says more than 40,000 people have left the enclave since the start of the Gaza war, typically for medical care or because they are dual citizens and in either case subject to a formal request from a third country—a major hurdle in an arduous process.

This time, Gazans desperate to leave had found a way out via a little-known organization called Al-Majd Europe, the travelers and Israeli officials said.