14/11/2023 – 0:32
Brazilians and relatives repatriated from the Gaza Strip are already in Brasília. The VC-2 plane carrying the 32 rescued people landed at 11:24 p.m. at the Air Base. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva received the group on their return to Brazil.
The returnees had been waiting for more than a month to leave the region of conflict between Israel and Hamas. “We are very grateful from the bottom of our hearts to everyone who helped us get here. I still can’t believe that I’m here, that I’m alive,” said 18-year-old Shahed Al-Banna.
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The group will stay for at least two days at the Officers’ Transit Hotel, at the Air Base. They will receive psychological support, medical care and immunization.
After this period, the group will divide throughout Brazil. Twenty-four people will go to São Paulo, 12 of which will stay with relatives and another 12 in a shelter specialized in welcoming refugees in the interior of the state. Four will stay in Brasília, two will go to Florianópolis (SC), one will go to Cuiabá (MT) and the other to Novo Hamburgo (RS).
Upon arrival in Brazil, immigration regularization will also be carried out by the Federal Police, and other documents will be issued that allow access to public services and employment.
Of the 32 people, 22 are Brazilians, seven are Palestinians naturalized Brazilians and three are Palestinians who are close relatives of Brazilians. In total, there are 17 children, nine women and six men.
Rescues
This is the tenth rescue flight of Operation Returning in Peace, led by the federal government to repatriate Brazilians in conflict areas in the Middle East.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, Brazil has rescued 1,477 people and 53 domestic animals. The first rescued people disembarked in Brazil on October 11th. Of the total, there were 1,462 Brazilians, 11 Palestinians, three Bolivian women and one Jordanian woman. The group that arrived this Monday, however, is the first that was in Gaza, the region where most of the conflict is concentrated.
The other Operation Returning in Peace flights departed from Tel Aviv, in Israel, where most of the rescues came from, and from Amman, Jordan, with Brazilians who were in Israel and in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank.
The Brazilians arriving today crossed the Gaza Strip border with Egypt, through the Rafah Portal, last Sunday (12), after being included in the seventh list of authorization for foreigners to leave Gaza.
They arrived in Cairo at night, where they were welcomed by medical and psychological teams. They had dinner, slept and had breakfast this Monday (13), before leaving for Brazil. The flight made two technical stops: one in Las Palmas, Spain, and another at Recife Air Base, already on Brazilian soil.
War
On October 7, Hamas, the group that controls the Gaza Strip, launched a surprise missile attack against Israel and the incursion of armed fighters on the ground, killing civilians and soldiers and taking hundreds of Israeli and foreign hostages. In response, Israel bombed several Hamas infrastructures in Gaza and imposed a total siege on the territory, cutting off water, fuel and electricity supplies.
The attacks have already left thousands of people dead, injured and homeless in both territories, most of them in Gaza.
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