Israeli
plan for forced transfer of Gaza’s population ‘a blueprint for crimes against
humanity’
Military
ordered to turn ruins of Rafah into ‘humanitarian city’ but experts call the
plan an internment camp for all Palestinians in Gaza
Emma
Graham-Harrison in Jerusalem
Mon 7 Jul
2025 20.57 BST
Israel’s
defence minister has laid out plans to force all Palestinians in Gaza into a
camp on the ruins of Rafah, in a scheme that legal experts and academics
described as a blueprint for crimes against humanity.
Israel
Katz said he has ordered Israel’s military to prepare for establishing a camp,
which he called a “humanitarian city”, on the ruins of the city of Rafah,
Haaretz newspaper reported.
Palestinians
would go through “security screening” before entering, and once inside would
not be allowed to leave, Katz said at a briefing for Israeli journalists.
Israeli
forces would control the perimeter of the site and initially “move” 600,000
Palestinians into the area – mostly people currently displaced in the al-Mawasi
area.
Eventually
the entire population of Gaza would be housed there, and Israel aims to
implement “the emigration plan, which will happen”, Haaretz quoted him saying.
Since
Donald Trump suggested at the start of the year that large numbers of
Palestinians should leave Gaza to “clean out” the strip, Israeli politicians
including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have enthusiastically
promoted forced deportation, often presenting it as a US project.
Katz’s
scheme breaks international law, said Michael Sfard, one of Israel’s leading
human rights lawyers. It also directly contradicted claims made hours earlier
by the office of Israel’s military chief, which said in a letter that
Palestinians were only displaced inside Gaza for their own protection.
“(Katz)
laid out an operational plan for a crime against humanity. It is nothing less
than that,” Sfard said. “It is all about population transfer to the southern
tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip.
“While
the government still calls the deportation ‘voluntary’, people in Gaza are
under so many coercive measures that no departure from the strip can be seen in
legal terms as consensual.
“When you
drive someone out of their homeland that would be a war crime, in the context
of a war. If it’s done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime
against humanity,” Sfard added.
Katz laid
out his plans for Gaza shortly before Netanyahu arrived in Washington DC for
meetings with Donald Trump, where he will be under heavy pressure to agree a
ceasefire deal to end or at least pause the 21-month war.
Work on
the “humanitarian city” at the heart of Katz’s plans could start during a
ceasefire, the defence minister said. Netanyahu is leading efforts to find
countries willing to “take in” Palestinians, he added.
Netanyahu
nominates Trump for Nobel peace prize, touts 'free choice' of Gaza relocation –
video
Speaking
from the White House on Monday, Netanyahu said the US and Israel were working
with other countries who would give Palestinians a “better future.”
“If
people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be
able to leave,” Netanyahu said, as he prepared to have dinner with Trump.
Israeli
politicians including the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, have also been
enthusiastic advocates of new Israeli settlements in Gaza.
Plans for
the construction of camps called “humanitarian transit areas”, to house
Palestinians inside and possibly outside Gaza, had previously been presented to
the Trump administration and discussed in the White House, Reuters reported on
Monday.
The $2bn
plan bore the name of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Reuters
said. GHF denied it had submitted a proposal and said slides seen by Reuters,
which laid out the plan, “are not a GHF document”.
Concerns
about Israel’s plans to displace Palestinians had previously been raised by
military orders for the operation launched this spring.
Sfard
represented three reservists who filed a petition to Israel’s courts, demanding
the military revoke commands to “mobilise and concentrate” the civilian
population of Gaza, and to prohibit any plans for the deportation of
Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip.
In a
letter responding to their claims, the office of Israel’s chief of staff, Eyal
Zamir, said that displacing Palestinians or concentrating the population in one
part of Gaza were not among the objectives of the operation.
That
statement was directly contradicted by Katz, said Prof Amos Goldberg, historian
of the Holocaust at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The
defence minister laid out clear plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza,
Goldberg said, and the creation of “a concentration camp or a transit camp for
Palestinians before they expel them”.
“It is
neither humanitarian nor a city,” he said of Katz’s planned holding area for
Palestinians.
“A city
is a place where you have possibilities of work, of earning money, of making
connections and freedom of movement.
“There
are hospitals, schools, universities and offices. This is not what they have in
mind. It will not be a livable place, just as the ‘safe areas’ are unliveable
now.”
Katz’s
plan also raised the immediate question of what would happen to Palestinians
who refused to follow Israeli orders to move into the new compound, said
Goldberg.
He added:
“What will happen if the Palestinians will not accept this solution and revolt,
because they are not completely helpless?”
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