Secret flights from Gaza reopen an old question in a new form: humanitarian evacuation or a model of permanent displacement?
The investigation into discreetly organised flights by which Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have been departing abroad over recent months has opened one of the most sensitive questions of the entire war: where humanitarian aid ends, and where a political project of changing the demographic picture of the territory begins. The trigger for the new storm was a media investigation published in mid-March 2026, according to which at least part of these operations was backed by the Israeli group Ad Kan, while flights to South Africa and Indonesia were presented as assistance to people trying to escape the devastated enclave. The organisers reject claims that this is a concealed plan to relocate Palestinians, but the controversy is not subsiding because everything is taking place in circumstances in which Gaza’s population has already been living for more than two years under extreme wartime pressure, shortages, repeated displacement and the prolonged collapse of the basic conditions for life.
The very fact that people want to leave an area that has suffered enormous destruction does not surprise either humanitarian organisations or legal experts. What is disputed, however, is that the discussion here is not only about an individual’s right to save their family and seek safety, but also about whether departure from such circumstances can even be regarded as a fully free choice. When a space is devastated, when homes are destroyed, healthcare barely functional, and access to goods, treatment and safe movement depends on a series of political and military decisions, then the line between voluntary evacuation and a departure produced under coercion becomes exceptionally thin. That is precisely why the story of secret flights from Gaza is no longer merely a logistical or humanitarian issue, but a topic that reaches into international law, regional diplomacy and the future status of the Palestinian population in that area.
How the story broke into public view
According to the published findings, at least three flights carrying passengers from Gaza have landed in Indonesia and South Africa since May 2025. Some passengers, according to testimonies cited in the investigation, paid sums of up to 2,000 US dollars per person in order to get a seat on a flight and complete the complex route out of Gaza via Israeli territory. Some of the people who travelled said they did not know at all who was organising their journey, because their only goal was to get their family out of a place where they no longer saw any possibility of normal survival. Such testimonies contain the core of the entire controversy: for those who are leaving, the organiser is often a secondary detail, while for political actors the organiser’s identity is precisely the crucial question.
Additional weight was given to the case by the discovery that the operation was linked to a network which, according to published documents and contracts, sought to conceal the Israeli background of the entire undertaking. The focus fell on the Ad Kan group, whose founder had previously publicly supported ideas about relocating Palestinians from Gaza. In public, the question was therefore immediately raised whether, alongside formal humanitarian channels, there is also an informal infrastructure testing a model for the departure of Gaza’s population under the guise of assistance. The organisers respond that rescuing people from a war zone cannot be criminalised and that this is practical help for those who want to leave. Critics, however, reply that motive is not irrelevant, especially when it is connected with earlier political ideas about the permanent relocation of Palestinians from the enclave.
Why the question of “voluntariness” is at the centre of the dispute
In legal terms, the entire debate revolves around one fundamental dilemma: can the departure of a population from an occupied or war-devastated area be considered voluntary if living conditions have been pushed to the furthest limits of endurance. During 2025, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights already warned that actions leading to the forced removal of Palestinians from Gaza may constitute forcible transfer, which is a serious violation of international humanitarian law. The Fourth Geneva Convention expressly prohibits individual and mass forcible transfers or deportations of protected persons from occupied territory, regardless of motive. This does not mean that an individual may not leave a war zone, but it does mean that every organised departure scheme must be viewed in a much broader context than the plane ticket alone.
It is precisely this broader context in Gaza today that is decisive. In the latest reports by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, it is stated that crossings were occasionally closed, medical evacuations were suspended, the return of residents from abroad was interrupted, and restrictions on the entry of aid further worsened supplies and drove up the prices of basic necessities. In such circumstances, the population is not deciding only between staying and leaving, but between multiple forms of insecurity, one of which may merely be somewhat less dangerous than another. That is why lawyers and human rights organisations warn that formal consent in itself is not sufficient proof of genuine freedom of choice if the entire decision was made under the pressure of war, hunger, disease, loss of home and uncertainty about return.
South Africa as an example of the case’s political sensitivity
One of the clearest examples of how politically explosive the entire operation is can be seen in the case of South Africa. Authorities in Johannesburg confirmed that on 13 November 2025 a charter flight arrived from Nairobi with 153 passengers from Palestine. South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs announced that the passengers had valid passports, but that some of them lacked exit stamps, return tickets and accommodation details, which is why additional checks were carried out before entry was approved. The authorities then also stated that no one from that group had applied for asylum at that moment, but that they had been granted a standard 90-day visa-free stay, subject to the usual conditions and security checks.
But the administrative part of the story quickly grew into a political dispute. The Palestinian embassy in South Africa warned that the trip had been organised by an unregistered and deceptive organisation which, in their interpretation, exploited the tragedy of Gaza’s population and took money from families. Shortly afterwards, the parliamentary committee on international relations in South Africa also demanded a thorough investigation, assessing that it must be clarified whether there is a “sinister purpose” behind bringing Palestinian refugees into the country. In this way, the case moved beyond the framework of a classic migrant or humanitarian procedure and became a matter of international law, diplomatic trust and the domestic politics of a country that in recent years has been among the loudest critics of Israeli operations in Gaza.
The broader political context: old ideas of “voluntary emigration” have not disappeared
The controversy over these flights would not have had the same resonance if there were not a longer history of political proposals in the background about displacing Palestinians from Gaza. At the beginning of 2025, US President Donald Trump publicly presented a proposal under which the United States would take a leading role in reshaping Gaza, while the Palestinian population would move elsewhere. That plan provoked strong opposition from Arab states, international organisations and many Western allies, and during March of the same year Trump softened his rhetoric by stating that “no one is expelling Palestinians” from Gaza. Nevertheless, the political damage had already been done: the very idea that mass population transfer could become part of the post-war solution entered the public space and remained there.
Because of this, every later private or semi-private initiative that enables Palestinians to leave Gaza automatically becomes a subject of suspicion. Even when someone claims to be helping exclusively those who want to leave, critics warn that in practice this may normalise a pattern in which war and destruction produce “voluntary” departure, and political centres of power then present that as a natural consequence of the situation on the ground. In other words, the fear is not only that people are leaving now, but that over time such departure could become an argument for the claim that Gaza has been “emptied” naturally and that return is only a secondary issue.
What those who leave say, and what their critics say
The testimonies of Palestinians who managed to leave Gaza show the full complexity of the situation. For some of them, departure is neither an ideological nor a political act, but an attempt to give their children a roof over their heads, access to a doctor, food and some kind of future that no longer exists in Gaza. In that sense, it is morally difficult to dispute their decision. A person who pulls their family out of rubble and accepts an uncertain journey to a foreign country is not making an abstract geopolitical decision, but trying to survive. That is exactly why the organisers of such flights argue that it is inhumane to prevent people from leaving when that possibility exists.
Even so, critics warn that individual tragedy must not be used to conceal a systemic problem. They stress that a person’s right to leave must be separated from a people’s right not to be permanently displaced. Humanitarian evacuation, they say, can be legitimate only if it is not linked to a political project of permanently removing the population and if the right of return remains preserved. The problem in Gaza’s case is that, according to available information, there are no clear and publicly guaranteed mechanisms that would ensure people who leave the possibility of returning when circumstances allow it. Without such a guarantee, every “evacuation” can in the eyes of critics look like a one-way exit.
Can the humanitarian argument be separated from geopolitical interest
That is a question to which there is currently no simple answer. In theory, organising the departure of civilians from a war zone can be an act of assistance, especially when it concerns vulnerable groups, the sick, or families that have concrete ties to the destination state. In practice, however, Gaza is not an ordinary war zone, but a territory whose status, borders, security, reconstruction and demographic future lie at the centre of one of the longest-running and most disputed conflicts of the present day. Because of this, even a logistical move such as a charter flight acquires political meaning that goes beyond the fates of the passengers on that flight.
It is also not irrelevant that, according to current humanitarian reports, the situation on the ground continues to change from week to week, with crossing closures, interruptions of evacuations and constant uncertainty about the entry of aid. When access to departure from Gaza depends on opaque channels, private intermediaries or politically connected groups, then the element of transparency disappears without which it is difficult to speak of a purely humanitarian operation. The less public information there is about the criteria, financing, identity of the organisers and the rights of passengers after arrival in third countries, the greater the suspicions that humanitarian language is serving to conceal a political objective.
What this affair means for Gaza’s future
The affair of the secret flights comes at a time when it is still not clear who and how imagines the post-war order in Gaza, who will manage reconstruction, what the security architecture will look like and under what conditions the population will be able to live normally in its own territory. That is precisely why every piece of news about the organised departure of Palestinians to third countries provokes a particularly strong reaction. This is not only about a few flights and a few hundred passengers, but about a test of principle: will the international community view people leaving Gaza as a necessary temporary protection of individuals or as a process that may open the door to the permanent emptying of the territory.
For the Palestinians who have left, the question is immediate and existential: will they be able to start a new life without losing their connection to their home. For the states receiving them, the question is legal and political: are they accepting people in distress or, perhaps unknowingly, participating in a process that in the long term changes the reality on the ground. And for Israel and its allies, this becomes a question of credibility: can they convincingly claim that this is exclusively humanitarian assistance as long as political ideas about relocating Palestinians exist in the public sphere and as long as it remains unclear under what conditions those who have left might one day be able to return.
That is precisely why the story of discreetly organised flights from Gaza goes beyond the number of passengers, routes and administrative procedures. It opens the fundamental question of whether a people exposed to extreme violence, destruction and prolonged displacement can at all make fully free decisions about leaving, and who bears responsibility for ensuring that a temporary exit from catastrophe does not turn into the permanent loss of home.
Sources:- Associated Press – investigation into flights from Gaza, the role of the Ad Kan group and reactions to the operation (link)- OCHA OPT – humanitarian report of 6 March 2026 on the closure of crossings, suspension of evacuations and the situation in Gaza (link)- OHCHR – warning by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights about the forcible transfer of Palestinians from Gaza (link)- South African Government – official statement on the arrival of 153 passengers from Palestine in Johannesburg on 13 November 2025 and the implementation of border procedures (link)- Parliament of South Africa – request by the parliamentary committee for a thorough investigation of the charter flight case involving Palestinians (link)- OHCHR – text of the Fourth Geneva Convention with the provision prohibiting forcible transfer and deportation of protected persons (link)
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