Israel’s plan to build Gaza ‘concentration camps’ was rolled out months ago

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has instructed the Israeli army to prepare a plan to forcibly relocate 600,000 Palestinians in Gaza to Rafah, as a first step towards later “concentrating” all of Gaza’s 2 million people in the southern Gaza governorate.

In a briefing to journalists on Monday, July 7, Katz said the plan is to build a “humanitarian city” on Rafah’s ruins, which has been all but flattened in recent months. According to Katz, Palestinians would be screened before entering the zone and would not be allowed to leave.

Afterwards, Katz added, Palestinians would be encouraged to leave the Gaza Strip altogether under what Israeli officials call “voluntary migration.” Katz also said that the so-called “humanitarian city” would be run by international bodies — not by the Israeli army — although he did not specify which international groups he was referring to. 

However, on the same day of Katz’s announcement, Reuters reported on a proposal it had seen bearing the name of the controversial Israeli-backed and U.S.-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which has been widely condemned for carrying out Israeli military objectives that aim to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, in addition to the near-daily “aid massacres” carried out by Israeli forces at its distribution sites. 

The GHF proposal examined by Reuters details “large-scale transit camps called ‘Humanitarian Transit Areas’ inside — and possibly outside — Gaza.” According to two sources that spoke to Reuters, the plan was submitted “sometime after February 11” and was reportedly recently discussed at the White House. It would cost $2 billion.

Reuters also noted that the proposal called for “using the sprawling facilities to ‘gain trust with the local population’ and to facilitate U.S. President Donald Trump’s ‘vision for Gaza,’” a possible reference to Trump’s February proposal for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza and the building of a “riviera” in the Strip. 

Trump later walked back his “plan,” but Israel was emboldened to fully adopt the displacement scheme under the rubric of “voluntary migration” and “carrying out Trump’s vision.” Ever since, Israel’s public articulation of its plans for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza has become explicit and repetitively announced. Earlier in March, the Israeli cabinet approved the creation of a special bureau to promote the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. Israel’s hardline Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, also repeated last week in a public event that the entire population of Gaza will be moved out of the Strip.

The recent plan articulated by Defense Minister Katz is the most recent culmination of this series of announcements. Simultaneously, Israel has been implementing this plan in stages over the course of two months, starting on May 17 with the launch of its ongoing expanded ground operation to “permanently conquer Gaza,” dubbed “Operation Gideon’s Chariots.” Israeli forces have gradually forced Gaza’s population into increasingly smaller enclaves within the Strip, which at the time Israel was conducting in tandem with its efforts to lay the groundwork for the operation of the GHF. The U.S. and Israeli-backed aid scheme opened a paltry number of distribution centers in late May and early June, forcing tens of thousands of Gazans to walk long distances and concentrate in progressively smaller areas to maintain proximity to the aid sites. 

Palestinians in Gaza have described the role of the aid scheme as using food and humanitarian aid as “bait” and turning the distribution centers into “death traps.” This is also the basis for the accusation that the GHF’s weaponization of aid for luring the population into these areas complements Israel’s military strategy of concentrating the population. 

Widespread condemnation from legal experts, Holocaust scholars

Reactions to Katz’s announcement for “concentrating” Gaza’s population in Rafah ahead of their displacement came fast. The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, denounced the plan, pointing out that it “would de-facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt for the Palestinians, displaced over and over across generations.”

Several international law and human rights experts also denounced the plan, including Baroness Helena Kennedy, one of Britain’s leading legal experts, who also reiterated in an interview with the BBC that Katz’s idea amounted to building “a concentration camp.” Kennedy dismissed Israel’s description of its mass expulsion plans for Gazans as voluntary. “We now know about how coercion can operate on the psyche of people, that they end up feeling so hopeless and so in despair, that there is nothing for them, that their life is over unless they leave,” she said.

Holocaust historian at the Hebrew University, Amos Goldberg, also called Katz’s plan “a concentration camp or a transit camp for Palestinians before they expel them,” stressing that it is “neither humanitarian nor a city.” The same criticism was shared by leading Israeli international law expert Michael Sfard, who said that, “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,” adding that Katz had “laid out an operational plan for a crime against humanity.”

Katz’s announcement came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, while ceasefire talks continued between Israel and Hamas in Qatar at the same time. Netanyahu left Washington on Tuesday without a breakthrough on Gaza’s ceasefire. However, both Netanyahu and Trump said during the visit that there had been progress on plans to “relocate” Palestinians from Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces continue to bomb the Palestinian civilian population across the Strip, killing at least 100 Palestinians in the past 24 hours. Simultaneously, Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip has continued since Israel broke the ceasefire in March, with four aid distribution centers south of the Strip being the only way for Gazans to access food. According to the UN, at least 780 Palestinians have been killed at these distribution centers by Israeli fire while waiting to receive aid.