Mohammed Abu Daqqa, 31, was the driving force of the jet ski.
Reuters
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Reuters
OSNABRÜCK, Germany — They’re a tiny speck dashing throughout the Mediterranean Sea. Three males in atypical road 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 lads are all Palestinians from Gaza, and their mission is to succeed in Europe. They left Libyan shores underneath the duvet of darkness one August night time 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 have a look at these images and suppose ‘I nonetheless cannot consider I did that,'” says Mohammed Abu Daqqa, 31, the driving force of the jet ski, as he scrolls by means of his telephone at a refugee welcome middle in Germany, the place he now stays.
The movies and images Abu Daqqa posted of the journey have been shared thousands and thousands of occasions 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 essential residence and a newly constructed farmhouse with land in Khan Younis. He purchased a brand new automobile.
Mohammed Abu Daqqa, a 31-year-old Palestinian who left Gaza, scrolls by means of photos on his telephone at a refugee welcome middle 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
After the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7 of that 12 months, every part modified. “In a single single second, the long run I dreamed of was gone,” Abu Daqqa says.
Within the ensuing Israeli offensive, every part Abu Daqqa owned — his enterprise, his automobile, 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 folks, in line with 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 go away Gaza through 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 chance. Since then, Abu Daqqa has needed to watch his youngsters undergo from a distance — within the images his spouse and family have despatched of his youngsters 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 every single day, worrying about his household, wishing he might be with them, and dwelling 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 international locations 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, have been all rejected. He went additional afield, to China, the place he’d beforehand made enterprise journeys. He confirmed NPR an e 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 pressured him to go away the nation. He ended up in Malaysia and Indonesia. “The world is just not open to folks 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 family 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 residence had killed everybody inside. His niece, Ella Osama Abu Daqqa, was the one survivor. She was simply 25 days outdated — 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 needed to get my household out of Gaza and produce 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 possibility 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 obtained caught in a storm? What about carrying sufficient gasoline?
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 velocity and agility. He hooked up a rubber dinghy to the again to hold gasoline and meals, and met two different Palestinians from Gaza who determined to hitch him.
At round 1 a.m. on Aug. 17, they climbed on the jet ski and set off into the darkish water. “The primary 70 kilometers, there have been 2-meter waves, 3-meter waves,” he says, till abruptly the ocean turned calm. He exhibits NPR a video of the three males celebrating, nearly delirious with happiness to have made it to date.
They saved going till they ran out of gasoline 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, and so they have been rescued by a passing Romanian patrol boat.
“It was a really emotional second. I used to be crying and laughing on the similar time,” he says.
Abu Daqqa was delivered to 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 hitch 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 observe the day the ceasefire was introduced in early October, saying he hopes they depart Gaza now. Nevertheless it’s not that straightforward. Caught within the bureaucratic procedures of in search of asylum, Abu Daqqa nonetheless would not know if or when he’ll be reunited along 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 will 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 fear of the bombardments and starvation.
“Life right here with out them,” he says, “is just not price dwelling.”
