Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has unveiled a plan to relocate all Palestinians in Gaza to a tightly controlled camp built on the ruins of Rafah, that could amount to crimes against humanity.
According to a report by Israeli publication Haaretz, Katz said he had instructed the Israeli military to prepare for what he called a “humanitarian city” in Rafah. Palestinians would be subjected to “security screening” before entry and barred from leaving the site, he said during a briefing with Israeli journalists.
Meanwhile, at least 35 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza since dawn, hospital sources told Al Jazeera Arabic on Thursday.
Most of the casualties were reportedly women and children, with the highest number of deaths occurring in central and southern parts of the besieged territory. At least 17 people were killed in the central city of Deir el-Balah.
Katz said the first phase would involve transferring 600,000 displaced Palestinians — mainly from al-Mawasi — to the site, with the ultimate aim of housing the entire population of Gaza there.
The perimeter of the camp would be secured by Israeli forces. Katz also reaffirmed Israel’s intent to implement “the emigration plan,” according to Haaretz.
“(Katz has) laid out an operational plan for a crime against humanity. It is nothing less than that. It is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip,” said Michael Sfard, a prominent Israeli human rights lawyer commenting on the matter.
“When you drive someone out of their homeland that would be a war crime, in the context of a war,” said Sfard. “If it’s done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime against humanity.”
The plan appears to contradict earlier statements from Israel’s military chief, whose office claimed in a letter that Palestinians were being relocated inside Gaza purely for their own protection.
The $2 billion proposal was attributed to the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), though the group later denied involvement. “The slides are not a GHF document,” the foundation said.
Prof Amos Goldberg, a Holocaust historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Katz’s plan amounted to ethnic cleansing. “The defence minister laid out clear plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza,” he said, describing it as “a concentration camp or a transit camp for Palestinians before they expel them”.
