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ISRAELI PLAN FOR FORCED TRANSFER OF GAZA’S POPULATION ‘A
BLUEPRINT FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY’  
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Emma Graham-Harrison in Jerusalem
July 7, 2025
The Guardian
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_ Israel’s defense 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. _

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 // The Guardian

 

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
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Since Donald Trump suggested at the start of the year that large
numbers of Palestinians should leave Gaza to “clean out”
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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
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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
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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.

 

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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?”

_[EMMA GRAHAM-HARRISON is the Guardian's chief Middle East
correspondent, based in Jerusalem]_

* crimes against humanity
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* war crimes
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* Gaza
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* internment
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* Internment Camp
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* Palestine
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* Israel
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* Donald Trump
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* Ceasefire
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* Genocide
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* U.S.-Israel relations
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* U.S.-Israel military aid
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* Hostages
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* Hamas
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