Outrage after 150 Palestinians held for 12 hours on South Africa plane

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: News websites
Today 16:03

A pastor who was allowed to board the aircraft has described suffocating heat and scenes of distress, saying children were “screaming and crying” as temperatures soared.

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Travelers wait inside Terminal B at San Jose Mineta International Airport, Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025, in San Jose, Calif. (AP)

South African authorities are facing mounting criticism after more than 150 Palestinian passengers, among them a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy, were kept aboard a charter plane for roughly 12 hours due to irregularities in their travel documents.

A pastor who was allowed to board the aircraft described suffocating heat and scenes of distress, saying children were “screaming and crying” as temperatures soared.

According to South Africa’s Border Management Authority, the Palestinians arrived at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport on Thursday morning following a stopover in Nairobi. Immigration officials denied them entry under the pretext that their papers lacked Israeli exit stamps, did not specify how long they intended to stay in South Africa, and did not include local contact details.

The pastor, Nigel Branken, who was let on to the plane while it was on the tarmac, told the South African broadcaster SABC that many of the Palestinians now intended to claim asylum in South Africa.

'Excruciating', chaotic atmosphere

The group, 153 passengers in total, was eventually permitted to disembark late Thursday night after the intervention of the Home Affairs Ministry and an offer of temporary accommodation from the humanitarian organization Gift of the Givers. Authorities said 23 passengers have since departed for other destinations, while 130 remain in the country.

Gift of the Givers’ founder, Imtiaz Sooliman, said the flight was the second in two weeks carrying Palestinians.

Public outcry has grown in a country long aligned with the Palestinian cause. Branken said the treatment of the passengers was unacceptable, describing the heat on board as “excruciating” and the atmosphere as chaotic. “South Africa should be letting these people into the airport at the very least and allowing them to apply for asylum,” he said. “This is a basic constitutional right.”

Palestinian conditions worse than South African apartheid: Mandela

Back in September, Mandla Mandela, grandson of Nelson Mandela, said that Palestinians are enduring harsher conditions under Israeli aggression on Gaza and occupation than Black South Africans did under apartheid.

At the time, Mandela urged the international community to stand with Palestine.

“Many of us who have visited the occupied territories in Palestine have only come back with one conclusion: that the Palestinians are experiencing a far worse form of apartheid than we ever experienced,” he added.

Mandela stressed the parallels between the decades-long struggle against South African apartheid and the Palestinian cause, saying that global solidarity must continue as it once did for his grandfather’s generation.

“We believe that the global community has to continue supporting the Palestinians, just as they stood side-by-side with us,” he added.

It is worth noting that South Africa filed a case against "Israel" in late 2023 before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, accusing it of violating its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Systems of ruling

The ICJ has been tasked with examining the repercussions of what it characterizes as "Israel's implementation of discriminatory legislation and measures." This is different from Pretoria's other class action lawsuit against the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which was concluded with orders to safeguard civilian lives in Gaza and avoid genocidal requisites by the Israeli occupation.

The current anti-apartheid case is an extension of the requested guidance the UNGA asked the ICJ to weigh in on regarding the "legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem."

In this case, the ICJ provides legal insight, which is not binding in nature. However, although the ICJ's verdict is binding, it is not always tangibly enforced. Regardless, its authority, although not tangibly effective, magnifies international pressure to enforce certain resolutions regarding the dispute at hand, in this case, the Israeli crushing occupation and its effect on Palestine.