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 rushing throughout the Mediterranean Sea. Three males in bizarre road garments — observe 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 duvet of darkness one August night time and set a course for the Italian island of Lampedusa — taking their lives into their very own arms 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 recognized try on a jet ski.
“I take a look at these pictures and suppose ‘I nonetheless cannot imagine I did that,'” says Mohammed Abu Daqqa, 31, the driving force of the jet ski, as he scrolls via his cellphone at a refugee welcome middle in Germany, the place he now stays.
The movies and pictures 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 properties — the household’s fundamental residence and a newly constructed farmhouse with land in Khan Younis. He purchased a brand new automotive.
Mohammed Abu Daqqa, a 31-year-old Palestinian who left Gaza, scrolls via photographs on his cellphone 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 yr, every little thing modified. “In a single single second, the longer term I dreamed of was gone,” Abu Daqqa says.
Within the ensuing Israeli offensive, every little thing Abu Daqqa owned — his enterprise, his automotive, his properties — 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 kids 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 hundreds 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 kids endure from a distance — within the pictures 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 daily, 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 kids.
After leaving Gaza, Abu Daqqa utilized for visas to international locations the place he hoped to say asylum and convey his household. He says his functions 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 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 will not be 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 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 obtained information that an Israeli airstrike on his uncle’s house had killed everybody inside. His niece, Ella Osama Abu Daqqa, was the one survivor. She was simply 25 days previous — virtually 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 convey them to me.”
Abu Daqqa determined to pay smugglers in Libya to cross by boat to Italy, in a journey the place hundreds of migrants drown every year. However this concerned ready many weeks for a chance to go. He felt he did not have that point.
At first, he says, the concept of utilizing a jet ski was only a loopy thought. There have been so many questions: May this pastime craft actually make it 186 miles throughout the Mediterranean? What if he acquired caught in a storm? What about carrying sufficient gasoline?
Abu Daqqa researched the concept 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 using his glossy, silver and black machine, circling quick and joyously within the waves, testing its velocity and agility. He connected 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 instantly the ocean turned calm. He exhibits NPR a video of the three males celebrating, virtually delirious with happiness to have made it to date.
They stored going till they ran out of gasoline about 12 miles off the coast of Lampedusa. Abu Daqqa used his satellite tv for pc cellphone 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 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 permit 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 notice the day the ceasefire was introduced in early October, saying he hopes they go away Gaza now. Nevertheless 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 along with his household.
Abu Daqqa says had he recognized when he left Gaza greater than a yr and half in the past how troublesome it might be to discover a protected nation to convey 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, “will not be price dwelling.”
