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| Displaced Palestinians walk through a makeshift tent camp in Rafah, Gaza, Friday, 10 May 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana) |
Israel-Palestinian Territory
Palestinian Territory – The Israeli plan, announced by Defence Minister Israel Katz, to transfer the entire population of the Gaza Strip to a so-called “humanitarian zone” over the ruins of part of Rafah marks a dangerous escalation in the ongoing genocide. It reflects a deliberate effort to depopulate Gaza and impose a new demographic reality that advances a colonial project to erase the Palestinian presence.
The proposed plan aims, in its initial phase, to gather hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians inside the Gaza Strip as a prelude to confining them in a “humanitarian zone” built on the ruins of a destroyed city lacking even the most basic necessities of life. The zone will be placed under strict security control, with severe restrictions on movement, including a ban on exiting. This effectively constitutes the establishment of a closed mass concentration camp, where the population will be forcibly held outside any legitimate legal framework.
The danger of this plan is compounded by Defence Minister Katz’s endorsement of what he termed the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians, clearly indicating Israel’s adoption of a policy of external displacement targeting the population of the Gaza Strip. This confirms that the concentration of people in the south is not a humanitarian measure but a transitional phase within a systematic plan to depopulate Gaza. It is a direct continuation of the policies of ethnic cleansing pursued by Israel since the Nakba of 1948, aimed at erasing the Palestinian presence and uprooting them from their land permanently.
The use of misleading terms such as “humanitarian zone” in the context of ongoing crimes, including bombing, starvation, and forced displacement, is a blatant attempt to conceal a full-fledged crime and mislead the international community
The Israeli plan constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law, particularly the absolute prohibition on the forced transfer and mass detention of protected populations under the Fourth Geneva Convention. It falls within the scope of forced displacement, persecution, and apartheid, which are patterns of policies and practices that individually amount to crimes against humanity under international law.
The most dangerous aspect of this plan is the concentration of nearly two million Palestinians in a devastated, sealed-off area deprived of basic living conditions and subject to severe movement restrictions. This constitutes an organised act of genocide, involving the deliberate imposition of life-threatening conditions aimed at the gradual destruction of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip through starvation, humiliation, mass detention, and forced subjugation.
Katz’s statements about exploiting the temporary ceasefire, currently under negotiation, clearly indicate that the ceasefire is not intended to halt the ongoing genocide but to give the Israeli army time and the necessary ground conditions to establish mass concentration camps. These camps are meant to receive hundreds of thousands of civilians who will later be forced to flee under the pressure of escalating killings, starvation, and forced displacement.
According to the Israeli minister, the plan involves transferring 600,000 Palestinians after subjecting them to so-called “security checks,” imposing severe restrictions on their movement and preventing them from leaving the area. This constitutes a flagrant violation of core principles of international law, including the prohibition of forced transfer, the right to freedom of movement and return, and protection from arbitrary detention and racial discrimination. It also breaches the peremptory norm prohibiting genocide, which may not be violated under any circumstances and imposes immediate legal obligations on all states to prevent the crime, stop its commission, and hold perpetrators accountable.
These official statements, which reflect a deliberate and declared policy, confirm that Israel is pursuing a systematic plan of forced displacement in the Gaza Strip through demographic engineering aimed at erasing the Palestinian presence by concentrating civilians in closed and besieged areas resembling mass concentration camps and forcibly imposed ghettos.
The contradiction between Defence Minister Israel Katz’s announcement of a plan to forcibly transfer and confine Gaza residents and the Chief of the General Staff Eyal Zamir’s statement two days earlier that transferring the population is not a military objective exposes a deliberate effort to mislead public opinion and the international community.
While the Israeli army seeks to deny such intentions, Katz outlined a detailed plan that fully aligns with the facts on the ground, including mass killings, forced evacuation orders, the targeting of shelters, and the confinement of hundreds of thousands of people in besieged areas.
Field evidence clearly shows that this is the execution of a political plan, not the result of emergency military operations. Katz’s statements, rather than the army’s denials, reflect the true intent and official policy, serving as conclusive evidence of mass forced displacement carried out under military cover.
The use of misleading terms such as “humanitarian zone” in the context of ongoing crimes, including bombing, starvation, and forced displacement, is a blatant attempt to conceal a full-fledged crime and mislead the international community. The plan has no genuine humanitarian dimension; it serves only as a cover for a clear strategic objective to forcibly alter the demographic composition of the Gaza Strip and gradually depopulate it.
The aid distribution centres run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, located within the so-called “humanitarian zone,” have effectively become death traps, with 758 Palestinians killed and over 5,000 injured since the centres opened in late May. This offers a stark warning of what awaits hundreds of thousands of civilians if forcibly transferred to that zone under a false humanitarian pretext that conceals a systematic genocide.... READ MORE https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6778
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