A Palestinian man, with hopes in his eyes to escape from war-torn Gaza, finally escaped to Europe on a jet ski. However, it took him almost a year, several thousand dollars, and some help from Artificial Intelligence (AI).
31-year-old Muhammad Abu Dakha showed immense courage to escape Gaza.
Initially, he tried escaping to China first, but the systematic method of applying for asylum did not work out as soon as he wanted. But he crossed the Rafah border into Egypt in April last year, paying $5000, according to Reuters.
After reaching China from Egypt, he wanted to seek asylum in China, but later he returned with disappointment.
He took a riskier but widely used route and travelled through Libya by boat, mostly heading to Italy. Dhaka documented his entire journey on video, audio, and still pictures.
His journey explained
However, he failed 10 times in trying to cross over with smugglers, but he did not stop and came up with a new plan. He bought a used Yamaha jet ski for about $5000 through a Libyan via an online marketplace and used $1500 in equipment, including a GPS device, a satellite phone, and life jackets for safety.
Meanwhile, two other Palestinians also joined him in this journey to escape Gaza. They also took major help from the AI chatbot ChatGPT to calculate the estimate of how much fuel they would need for the trip.
They set off from the Libyan port of al-Khoms, which is about 350 km from Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost island, measured in a straight line.
Dhaka drove the ski for about 12 hours; however, despite having AI’s help, they ran out of fuel some 20 km before Lampedusa, a Mediterranean island in the autonomous region of Sicily in Italy.
But they were close enough, so it did not become a major obstacle. They arrived on the island on August 18 after being picked up by a Romanian patrol boat.