OSNABRÜCK, Germany — They are a tiny speck speeding across the Mediterranean Sea. Three men in ordinary street clothes — track pants, coats over life jackets, a "Free Palestine" cap — sit astride a jet ski, gripping each other tightly as they drive full throttle across the vast expanse of blue water.
The men are all Palestinians from Gaza, and their mission is to reach Europe. They left Libyan shores under the cover of darkness one August night and set a course for the Italian island of Lampedusa — taking their lives into their own hands to find a safe country for themselves and their families. Many attempt this dangerous 186-mile journey in overcrowded smugglers' boats, but this is the first known attempt 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 driver of the jet ski, as he scrolls through his phone at a refugee welcome center in Germany, where he now stays.
The videos and photos Abu Daqqa posted of the journey have been shared millions of times on social media. But Abu Daqqa takes little joy in this fame. He has a wife and two young boys — Sanad, age 6, and Mahmoud, 4 — who are still in Gaza. All of this has been to try to get them out, and this remains his only focus.
In Gaza, Abu Daqqa had built a successful business providing internet to parts of the territory, and importing goods. By 2023, he had two homes — the family's main residence and a newly built farmhouse with land in Khan Younis. He bought a new car.
After the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 of that year, everything changed. "In one single moment, the future I dreamed of was gone," Abu Daqqa says.
In the ensuing Israeli offensive, everything Abu Daqqa owned — his business, his car, his homes — has been destroyed. Abu Daqqa says more than 250 members of his extended family have been killed, in the offensive that has killed more than 69,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. His wife and children have survived multiple displacements. For months now, they have lived in a tent in a crowded encampment on the seashore. As famine gripped parts of Gaza, they too went hungry.
In April 2024, Abu Daqqa paid thousands of dollars for a rare chance to leave Gaza via the Rafah border crossing to Egypt. The plan was for his family to follow, but then Israel took control of the border, closing off this possibility. Since then, Abu Daqqa has had to watch his children suffer from a distance — in the photos his wife and relatives have sent of his children holding empty pans as they search for food, or in their voice notes where they plead to be reunited with him.
The picturesque western German city Osnabrück, where he now stays, is surrounded by fields with horses and white picket fences. It jars with the nightmare he lives every day, worrying about his family, wishing he could be with them, and living in terror of receiving news from Gaza that the worst has happened to his wife and children.
After leaving Gaza, Abu Daqqa applied for visas to countries where he hoped to claim asylum and bring his family. He says his applications to Arab states, including Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, were all rejected. He went further afield, to China, where he'd previously made business trips. He showed NPR an email correspondence with the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, in Beijing, requesting asylum. But before the claim was processed, he says, police in China detained him for a week and then forced him to leave the country. He ended up in Malaysia and Indonesia. "The world is not open to people from Gaza," he says.
He traveled to Libya and stayed with relatives in Tripoli. There, he imported motorcycles from China with the hope of starting a home-delivery service to earn money to send to his family in Gaza. But on March 20, Abu Daqqa received news that an Israeli airstrike on his uncle's home had killed everyone inside. His niece, Ella Osama Abu Daqqa, was the only survivor. She was just 25 days old — almost a newborn, found in the concrete rubble. And two months later, his own home — the last one still 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 decided to pay smugglers in Libya to cross by boat to Italy, in a journey where thousands of migrants drown each year. But this involved waiting many weeks for an opportunity to go. He felt he didn't have that time.
At first, he says, the idea of using a jet ski was just a crazy thought. There were so many questions: Could this hobby craft really make it 186 miles across the Mediterranean? What if he got caught in a storm? What about carrying enough fuel?
Abu Daqqa researched the idea using ChatGPT. It just might work, he decided. He bought a jet ski at a market in the Libyan capital Tripoli for $5,000. Abu Daqqa shows videos set to music of him riding his sleek, silver and black machine, circling fast and joyously in the waves, testing its speed and agility. He attached a rubber dinghy to the back to carry fuel and food, and met two other Palestinians from Gaza who decided to join him.
At around 1 a.m. on Aug. 17, they climbed on the jet ski and set off into the dark water. "The first 70 kilometers, there were 2-meter waves, 3-meter waves," he says, until suddenly the sea became calm. He shows NPR a video of the three men celebrating, almost delirious with happiness to have made it so far.
They kept going until they ran out of fuel about 12 miles off the coast of Lampedusa. Abu Daqqa used his satellite phone to call a cousin in Germany, who communicated with a migrant rescue hotline, and they were 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 brought to Italy, but he didn't stay there long. Instead, he traveled to Germany, where he applied for asylum, hoping the authorities will allow his family to join him.
The news of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has brought some peace of mind, but his family is from a part of Gaza close to the border that the Israeli military still controls. Much of the territory is destroyed. His oldest son, 6-year-old Sanad, sent him a voice note the day the ceasefire was announced in early October, saying he hopes they leave Gaza now. But it's not that simple. Caught in the bureaucratic procedures of seeking asylum, Abu Daqqa still doesn't know if or when he'll be reunited with his family.
Abu Daqqa says had he known when he left Gaza more than a year and half ago how difficult it would be to find a safe country to bring his family to, he would not have left. He says he would have stayed with them, suffering together with the terror of the bombardments and hunger.
"Life here without them," he says, "is not worth living."
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