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| Palestinians will have to pass ‘security screening’ into the camp and then will not be allowed to leave, the defence minister told Israeli journalists. Photograph: Reuters |
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... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/07/israeli-minister-reveals-plan-to-force-population-of-gaza-into-camp-on-ruins-of-rafah
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