Mohammed Abu Daqqa, 31, escaped from Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa in August by riding a jet ski across the Mediterranean — a journey of roughly 186 miles with two other Palestinians. Wearing ordinary clothes and life jackets, they left Libyan waters around 1 a.m., towing a rubber dinghy stacked with fuel and supplies. After fighting 2–3 meter waves for the first 70 kilometers, the sea calmed but the jet ski ran out of fuel about 12 miles from Lampedusa and a Romanian patrol boat rescued them. Videos and photos Abu Daqqa shared of the voyage circulated widely.
Abu Daqqa fled Gaza after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack and the intense Israeli offensive that followed. He says his business, homes and car were destroyed and that more than 250 of his relatives were killed. His wife and two young sons, Sanad, 6, and Mahmoud, 4, survived repeated displacements and have been living in a crowded tent camp on the shoreline, where food shortages worsened as famine spread in parts of Gaza.
He first managed to leave Gaza through Rafah in April 2024, hoping his family could follow, but Israeli control of the border shut that route. Determined to bring them out, he went to Libya and tried to build a small delivery business importing motorcycles. After an airstrike killed members of his extended family — leaving a 25-day-old niece as the lone survivor amid the rubble — and after his last remaining home was destroyed, he decided he could not wait for a smuggled boat.
Abu Daqqa says he researched crossing options online and even used ChatGPT to help plan the jet-ski idea. He bought a craft in Tripoli for about $5,000, tested it at sea and recruited two other Palestinians to join him. After reaching Lampedusa he was transferred to Italy, then continued to Germany, where he now lives in Osnabrück and has applied for asylum. His priority is arranging a safe path for his wife and sons to join him.
Before the jet-ski crossing, he sought visas and asylum in other countries — including Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and China — but met refusals. In Beijing he says he was detained for a week and then deported. He traveled through Malaysia and Indonesia before reaching Europe. He regrets leaving without his family and says that, if he had known how difficult it would be to find a nation that would accept them, he would have stayed and faced the danger alongside them. “Life here without them is not worth living,” he says.
A temporary ceasefire offered a brief window of hope and a voice note from his eldest son conveyed optimism about escaping, but bureaucratic obstacles and continued Israeli control over parts of Gaza have kept reunification uncertain. For Abu Daqqa, the perilous jet-ski crossing was both a desperate attempt to secure safety and a gamble intended to open a route to rescue the family he left behind.