Just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops to attack Ukraine’s cities on Feb. 24, Ra’am and the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement opened a joint emergency situation room to oversee the extraction of Israeli Arab students. According to estimates, there are between 2,000 and 2,500 Israeli Arab students in Ukraine, most of them studying medicine. They decided to study overseas due to the difficulty in getting accepted to Israeli universities because of a limited number of places, particularly in the faculties of medicine.

As part of the operation, which was led by Ra’am, a number of pick-up points were created along the borders of countries neighboring Ukraine, including Poland, Romania and Moldova. Arab students were told to get to these points, where there would be party representatives and volunteers to provide them with transportation, lodging, food and drink. They would also be provided with an internet connection so that they could call worried family members back home and allay their fears. Finally, they would also arrange flights back to Israel for anyone who wanted that. 

Ra’am’s rescue efforts were led by Knesset member Iman Khatib-Yassin and the party’s Director-General Ibrahim Hijazi. The party’s leader, Mansour Abbas, maintained constant contact with the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the embassy in Ukraine to coordinate with everyone working on the issue. The goal was to be totally synchronized at any given moment so that the operation would be as successful as possible.

The results were quick in coming. Within just two days, on Feb. 26 Ra’am announced that they were able to ensure the exit of hundreds of students from Ukraine, with an emphasis on Odessa, Dnipro and Kharkiv. Party representatives waited for them at the Moldova border crossing to provide them with lodgings in hotels and basic needs. Similar operations took place on Ukraine’s borders with Romania and Poland to help students arriving there. The students were then taken to the Romanian city of Iasi, from where they would be flown to Israel. Knesset member Khatib-Yassin managed contacts with the Foreign Ministry to ensure that there were flights from Romania to Israel. Then, on March 1, she waited at Ben Gurion Airport to greet the arriving students. Ra’am also provided these services to Arab students from other countries, such as Morocco, Lebanon, Tunisia and Jordan, and who came to the party’s meeting points across the Ukrainian border.