Mohammed Abu Daqqa, a 31-year-old Palestinian who left Gaza, scrolls by pictures on his telephone at a refugee welcome heart in Germany. He describes how he rode a jet ski throughout the Mediterranean to take refuge in Europe, and is set to get his household out of Gaza.
Ruth Sherlock/NPR
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Ruth Sherlock/NPR
OSNABRÜCK, Germany — They’re a tiny speck rushing throughout the Mediterranean Sea. Three males in odd avenue garments — monitor pants, coats over life jackets, a “Free Palestine” cap — sit astride a jet ski, gripping one another tightly as they drive full throttle throughout the huge expanse of blue water.
The boys are all Palestinians from Gaza, and their mission is to succeed in Europe. They left Libyan shores underneath the quilt of darkness one August evening and set a course for the Italian island of Lampedusa — taking their lives into their very own fingers to discover a protected nation for themselves and their households. Many try this harmful 186-mile journey in overcrowded smugglers’ boats, however that is the primary identified try on a jet ski.
“I look at these photos and think ‘I still can’t believe I did that,'” says Mohammed Abu Daqqa, 31, the motive force of the jet ski, as he scrolls by his telephone at a refugee welcome heart in Germany, the place he now stays.
The movies and photographs Abu Daqqa posted of the journey have been shared thousands and thousands of instances on social media. However Abu Daqqa takes little pleasure on this fame. He has a spouse and two younger boys — Sanad, age 6, and Mahmoud, 4 — who’re nonetheless in Gaza. All of this has been to attempt to get them out, and this stays his solely focus.
In Gaza, Abu Daqqa had constructed a profitable enterprise offering web to elements of the territory, and importing items. By 2023, he had two houses — the household’s major residence and a newly constructed farmhouse with land in Khan Younis. He purchased a brand new automotive.
After the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7 of that 12 months, every part modified. “In one single moment, the future I dreamed of was gone,” Abu Daqqa says.
Within the ensuing Israeli offensive, every part Abu Daqqa owned — his enterprise, his automotive, his houses — has been destroyed. Abu Daqqa says greater than 250 members of his prolonged household have been killed, within the offensive that has killed greater than 69,000 individuals, based on the Gaza Well being Ministry. His spouse and youngsters have survived a number of displacements. For months now, they’ve lived in a tent in a crowded encampment on the seashore. As famine gripped elements of Gaza, they too went hungry.
In April 2024, Abu Daqqa paid 1000’s of {dollars} for a uncommon probability to depart Gaza by way of the Rafah border crossing to Egypt. The plan was for his household to observe, however then Israel took management of the border, closing off this risk. Since then, Abu Daqqa has needed to watch his kids endure from a distance — within the photographs his spouse and kin have despatched of his kids holding empty pans as they seek for meals, or of their voice notes the place they plead to be reunited with him.
The picturesque western German metropolis Osnabrück, the place he now stays, is surrounded by fields with horses and white picket fences. It jars with the nightmare he lives on daily basis, worrying about his household, wishing he could possibly be with them, and residing in terror of receiving information from Gaza that the worst has occurred to his spouse and youngsters.
After leaving Gaza, Abu Daqqa utilized for visas to nations the place he hoped to say asylum and produce his household. He says his purposes to Arab states, together with Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, had been all rejected. He went additional afield, to China, the place he’d beforehand made enterprise journeys. He confirmed NPR an electronic mail correspondence with the U.N. refugee company, UNHCR, in Beijing, requesting asylum. However earlier than the declare was processed, he says, police in China detained him for per week after which compelled him to depart the nation. He ended up in Malaysia and Indonesia. “The world is not open to people from Gaza,” he says.
Mohammed Abu Daqqa, a 31-year-old Palestinian from Gaza, poses for a selfie with two different Palestinians close to Khums, Libya, Aug. 17, earlier than taking a jet ski to Lampedusa, Italy.
Mohammed Abu Daqqa/Reuters
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Mohammed Abu Daqqa/Reuters
He traveled to Libya and stayed with kin in Tripoli. There, he imported bikes from China with the hope of beginning a home-delivery service to earn cash to ship to his household in Gaza. However on March 20, Abu Daqqa acquired information that an Israeli airstrike on his uncle’s dwelling had killed everybody inside. His niece, Ella Osama Abu Daqqa, was the one survivor. She was simply 25 days previous — nearly a new child, discovered within the concrete rubble. And two months later, his own residence — the final one nonetheless standing — was destroyed.
“I knew there was no time left,” Abu Daqqa says. “I had to get my family out of Gaza and bring them to me.”
Abu Daqqa determined to pay smugglers in Libya to cross by boat to Italy, in a journey the place 1000’s of migrants drown annually. However this concerned ready many weeks for a chance to go. He felt he did not have that point.
At first, he says, the thought of utilizing a jet ski was only a loopy thought. There have been so many questions: Might this pastime craft actually make it 186 miles throughout the Mediterranean? What if he bought caught in a storm? What about carrying sufficient gas?
Abu Daqqa researched the thought utilizing ChatGPT. It simply may work, he determined. He purchased a jet ski at a market within the Libyan capital Tripoli for $5,000. Abu Daqqa exhibits movies set to music of him driving his modern, silver and black machine, circling quick and joyously within the waves, testing its pace and agility. He connected a rubber dinghy to the again to hold gas and meals, and met two different Palestinians from Gaza who determined to affix him.
At round 1 a.m. on Aug. 17, they climbed on the jet ski and set off into the darkish water. “The first 70 kilometers, there were 2-meter waves, 3-meter waves,” he says, till instantly the ocean grew to become calm. He exhibits NPR a video of the three males celebrating, nearly delirious with happiness to have made it to this point.
They stored going till they ran out of gas about 12 miles off the coast of Lampedusa. Abu Daqqa used his satellite tv for pc telephone to name a cousin in Germany, who communicated with a migrant rescue hotline, they usually had been rescued by a passing Romanian patrol boat.
“It was a very emotional moment. I was crying and laughing at the same time,” he says.
Abu Daqqa was dropped at Italy, however he did not keep there lengthy. As an alternative, he traveled to Germany, the place he utilized for asylum, hoping the authorities will enable his household to affix him.
The information of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has introduced some peace of thoughts, however his household is from part of Gaza near the border that the Israeli navy nonetheless controls. A lot of the territory is destroyed. His oldest son, 6-year-old Sanad, despatched him a voice be aware the day the ceasefire was introduced in early October, saying he hopes they depart Gaza now. However it’s not that easy. Caught within the bureaucratic procedures of looking for asylum, Abu Daqqa nonetheless would not know if or when he’ll be reunited together with his household.
Abu Daqqa says had he identified when he left Gaza greater than a 12 months and half in the past how troublesome it might be to discover a protected nation to deliver his household to, he wouldn’t have left. He says he would have stayed with them, struggling along with the phobia of the bombardments and starvation.
“Life here without them,” he says, “is not worth living.”
