Latest news with #humanitariancity
Al Jazeera
15 hours ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Israel presses ahead with Gaza ‘concentration camp' plans despite criticism
Israel is ploughing ahead with a plan to build what critics have described as a 'concentration camp' for Palestinians on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza, in the face of a growing backlash at home and abroad. The suggestion, first mooted by Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz earlier this month, anticipates an area that could accommodate an initial group of some 600,000 already displaced Palestinians in Gaza, which would then be expanded to accommodate all of the enclave's pre-war population of some 2.2 million people. It would be run by international forces and have no Hamas presence. Once inside Katz's self-styled 'humanitarian city', Palestinians would not be allowed to leave to other areas in Gaza, but would instead be encouraged to 'voluntarily emigrate' to other unspecified countries, the minister said. Katz's plan has already received significant criticism. Labelled a 'concentration camp' by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and illegal by Israeli lawyers, it has even been criticised by the military that will be responsible for implementing it, with the military's chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, reportedly calling it 'unworkable' with 'more holes in it than cheese'. Internationally, a British minister said he was 'appalled' by the plan, while Austria and Germany's foreign ministers expressed their 'concern'. The United Nations said it was 'firmly against' the idea. But members of the Israeli government have defended the idea, and leaks continue to emerge in the Israeli media over the debate surrounding it within the government – with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly asking only for a plan that was speedier and less costly than a plan presented by the Israeli army. An Al Jazeera investigation has found that Israel has recently increased the number of demolitions it is conducting in Rafah, possibly paving the way for the 'humanitarian city'. Long planned Depopulating Gaza has long been an ambition of some of Israel's more hardline settler groups, who believe themselves to have a divine mandate to occupy the Palestinian territory. The Israeli far-right was encouraged to press ahead with the idea when United States President Donald Trump suggested in February that Palestinians in Gaza could be displaced and moved elsewhere. Since then, both Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have backed calls for displacement. When Netanyahu announced in May the creation of the controversial US-backed GHF, a body intended to deliver limited aid into the enclave his forces had been besieging since early March, Netanyahu referred to a future 'sterile zone' that Gaza's population would be moved into, where they would be allowed aid and food. Later the same month, Smotrich, who has criticised the current plan as too costly but is not opposed to the idea in principle, also suggested that plans were under way to push Gaza's population into a camp. Addressing a 'settlement conference' in the occupied West Bank, Smotrich told his audience that what remained of Gaza would be 'totally destroyed' and its population pressed into a 'humanitarian zone' close to the Egyptian border, foreshadowing the language used by Katz. Part of the Israeli plan Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flashenberg told Al Jazeera that – for the Israeli government – there was merit to the plan, both from a security perspective, and 'from the perspective of ethnically cleansing' Gaza, and providing an end goal that Israel's leaders could define as a success. 'As I understand it, parts of the military regard removing civilians from the [non-Israeli controlled parts] of Gaza and concentrating them in a single space as an ideal first step in locating and eliminating Hamas,' Flashenberg said of the Palestinian group that Israel has failed to eliminate in 21 months of conflict, despite the killing of more than 58,000 people. Flashenberg added that the plan would effectively create an 'ethnic cleansing terminal', from which, once people were separated from their original homes, 'it makes it easier to move them elsewhere'. 'Of course it complicates ceasefire negotiations, but so what?' Flashenberg said, referring to the ongoing talks aimed at bringing about an initial 60-day ceasefire. 'Nothing has really changed. It's possible, of course, that with work on the concentration camp under way, Hamas might still accept the ceasefire and hope that things might change.' 'It's part of their entire mentality,' Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of the Israeli parliament representing the Hadash-Ta'al party, said. 'They really do believe that they can do anything: that they can move all of these people around as if they're not even humans. Even if imprisoning just the first 600,000 people suggested by Katz is inconceivable. How can you do that without it leading to some kind of massacre?' 'That they're even talking about criminal acts without every state in the world condemning them is dangerous,' she added. But lawyers in Israel have questioned the legality of the move. Military lawyers are reported to have 'raised concerns' that Israel might face accusations of forced displacement, and an open letter from a number of Israeli legal scholars is more explicit, slamming the proposal as 'manifestly illegal'. 'Nothing humanitarian' According to the United Nations, at least 1.9 million people, about 90 percent of Gaza's pre-war population, have been displaced as a result of Israeli attacks. Many have been displaced multiple times. Earlier this month, Amnesty concluded that, despite the militarised delivery of limited aid into the strip, Israel is continuing to use starvation as a weapon of war. According to the rights agency, the malnutrition and starvation of children and families across Gaza remain widespread, with the healthcare system that might typically care for them pushed to breaking point by Israel. 'Humanitarian city? I despise all these euphemisms. There's nothing humanitarian about this. It's utterly inhumane,' Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, said. 'There would be nothing humanitarian about the conditions that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would be pushed into or about the idea you can only leave by going to another country.' 'This has to be condemned and there has to be consequences,' he continued. 'It's not true when people say there's no international community any more. If you trade with Israel, cooperate militarily or diplomatically with it, you have leverage. The US has leverage, the EU [European Union] has leverage. All these actors do.' 'By shrugging your shoulders and saying it's just anarchy,' he concluded, 'you're handing the keys to Smotrich, Katz and Netanyahu and saying there's nothing you can do.'
The National
a day ago
- Politics
- The National
Israel tells Gaza mediators it plans to create security zone and evict Palestinians in the north
Israel has informed Egyptian and Qatari mediators it intends to create a security zone up to 2km deep along its entire border with Gaza as well as the enclave's Mediterranean coast, sources told The National on Wednesday. They said Israel has also told the mediators it plans to evict residents of the northern Gaza towns of Jabalia and Beit Lahia and resettle them in Al Mawasi, a narrow strip of coastal land near the southern city of Khan Younis. Israel also informed them of its intention to gather hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in a ' humanitarian city ' south of Rafah on the border with Egypt, according to the sources. Hamas has claimed that Israel wants to keep at least 40 per cent of the Gaza Strip under its control as part of any deal to end the war. 'The Israeli plans amount to an attempt to re-demarcate the borders for Gaza,' said one of the sources. 'They want Gaza carved up.' News of the 'humanitarian city' broke last week when Israel's Hebrew press quoted Defence Minister Israel Katz saying 600,000 Palestinians will be moved there. Palestinians moving into the city will be screened to weed out Hamas operatives, he said. Once in, they will not be able to leave, he added. Ceasefire talks have continued in Qatar for a second week without a breakthrough. The sources have said the talks stalled over the extent of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, which Hamas rejects as insufficient. The main provisions of the proposals under discussion include a 60-day truce, release of hostages held in Gaza, flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza and discussions on an end to the war. The Doha talks, according to the sources, have made progress on several key issues amid upbeat comments about the prospects for a deal by US President Donald Trump and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. Mr Trump was scheduled to meet Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at the White House on Wednesday. The US President said on Sunday he hoped the ceasefire talks would be 'straightened out' this week. But, besides the issue of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, the talks could be derailed if Israel stands by its latest plans for after the war. There was no immediate word from Israel or the US on the plans shared with the mediators. Their general gist has been mentioned previously by US and Israeli officials but never as clear-cut or fully as they were laid out by the sources on Wednesday. The Gaza war has not had a reprieve since a two-month truce unravelled, with Israel resuming military operations on March 18. In a move likely to further dim the prospect of a deal, Israel on Wednesday said its military had created a new route in southern Gaza separating several towns east of Khan Younis from the rest of the territory. Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said the corridor showed Israel was not serious about reaching a ceasefire deal. 'It confirms the occupation's long-term intentions and plans to remain inside the Strip, not to withdraw, and not to end the war. This contradicts everything it claims at the negotiating table or communicates to mediators,' Mr Naim wrote on his Facebook page. The sources said Israel is also proposing to Egypt and the Palestinian Authority that they jointly run security in postwar Gaza. Egypt has rejected the offer, but said it remains ready to contribute security advisers to a multinational mission to train a new police force, they said. Israel has also renewed its demands that Hamas leaders leave the strip with their families to live in exile and for the militant group to disarm. Hamas has suggested its readiness for its leaders to leave on condition that Israel pledges not to target them. It has said it is willing to lay down its arms, but only if Israel formally ends the war. The latest Israel-Hamas war was triggered in October 2023 when Hamas and its allies attacked communities in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. Gaza's health ministry says Israel's subsequent military assault has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians. It has also caused a hunger crisis, displaced nearly Gaza's entire population and given rise to charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice and of war crimes at the International Criminal Court. Israel denies the accusations. Israel insists the war will not end before the dismantlement of Hamas's military and governing capabilities and the release of the remaining hostages. Hamas says it will not agree to a deal that does not include Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and an end of the war.
Al Mayadeen
2 days ago
- Politics
- Al Mayadeen
Israeli Rafah plan is ethnic cleansing disguised as aid: Ex-PM Olmert
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in an interview with The Guardian on Monday, said that "Israel's" proposed "humanitarian city" in Rafah is tantamount to ethnic cleansing and would operate as a concentration camp if realized. He warned that the plan, supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Security Minister Israel Katz, represents a dangerous intensification of "Israel's" ongoing violations against the Palestinian people. "It is a concentration camp. I am sorry," Olmert said, responding to Katz's directive for the military to prepare a blueprint to house 600,000 Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip. Under this plan, Palestinians would be forbidden from leaving the area except to other countries, a restriction Olmert described as an unmistakable form of forced displacement. "If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new 'humanitarian city', then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing. It hasn't yet happened," he noted, warning that the only logical interpretation of the strategy is one of forcible expulsion. According to the UN and multiple humanitarian agencies, nearly 800 Palestinians have been killed in recent weeks while attempting to access aid, as Israeli strikes have repeatedly targeted so-called aid distribution zones. Olmert's remarks come amid growing condemnation of "Israel's" ongoing operations. A July 13 report from Reuters detailed how at least eight children collecting water in al-Nuseirat were killed in an Israeli missile strike, with Israeli forces later blaming a "technical malfunction." Human rights groups argue such incidents are not anomalies but part of a systemic pattern of violence targeting civilians under the guise of humanitarian management. On the ground, the toll is staggering, with over 58,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since the war began, and more than 1.7 million displaced. Nearly 70% of the territory's infrastructure has been destroyed. Hospitals and health facilities have been bombed into dysfunction, over 900 damaged or flattened, while entire residential neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. The humanitarian situation is compounded by the collapse of clean water systems, widespread disease, and near-total food insecurity. Critics argue these conditions render any official language of "humanitarianism" void of meaning. Read more: Gaza aid line targeted: Dozens killed, UN confirms 798 dead at sites Olmert said the humanitarian city plan cannot be separated from increasingly extreme rhetoric by cabinet ministers who have openly called to "cleanse" Gaza and pursue settlement expansion. "When they build a camp where they [plan to] 'clean' more than half of Gaza, then the inevitable understanding of the strategy of this [is that] it is not to save [Palestinians]. It is to deport them, to push them, and to throw them away. There is no other understanding that I have, at least," he said. Prominent Israeli legal experts and rights advocates have echoed these concerns, warning that under specific conditions, the policy could amount to genocide. Beyond Gaza, Olmert issued a denunciation of the current government's handling of settler violence in the occupied West Bank, calling the 'Hilltop Youth' militias a grave internal threat for committing daily war crimes against Palestinians under the protection of the government. In remarks for Israeli broadcaster Channel 13 and elaborated further in a column for Haaretz, Olmert characterized the settler groups as organized terrorist militias carrying out a government-enabled campaign of violence, displacement, and land theft against Palestinians. "War crimes are occurring daily. Jews are murdering Palestinians. Burning them," Olmert said on live television, adding that "The IDF doesn't do what it's supposed to do. The police shut their eyes." Known as the "Hilltop Youth," these settler militias consist mostly of radicalized young men entrenched in illegal outposts across the occupied West Bank. Their attacks, according to Olmert, are not the actions of a rogue minority, as often claimed by Israeli officials, but part of a deliberate policy backed by political forces within the Israeli government. 'These militias are not a gang of savages,' he wrote in Haaretz, 'but the vanguard of everyone who encourages and inspires them – and covers for them.' Olmert explicitly linked their actions to senior far-right figures, naming ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, Tzvi Succot, and others as part of the political ecosystem that enables settler violence. "There are people in power who will protect them, as long as they don't relent," he warned, adding that "Palestinians are assaulted and run off their lands. Their fields are burned. Their homes are burned. Yesterday, an American citizen was beaten on the head with a club and killed." Read more: Israeli 'humanitarian city' plan jeopardizes Gaza ceasefire deal talks
Al Mayadeen
2 days ago
- Politics
- Al Mayadeen
Internal rift deepens in 'Israel' over Gaza concentration camp plans
A controversial Israeli scheme to forcibly transfer hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into a militarized encampment in southern Gaza has drawn fierce condemnation from across political, legal, and humanitarian circles. Marketed by Israeli leaders as a "humanitarian city," the project has been exposed as a blueprint for ethnic cleansing, further entrenching "Israel's" ongoing war crimes against the Palestinian people. Under the plan, approved by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pushed forward by Security Minister Israel Katz, up to 600,000 Palestinians would be confined to a heavily restricted zone near the Egyptian border. Movement in and out of the area would be virtually impossible, with only third-country departures permitted, effectively stripping displaced Palestinians of their right of return. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, breaking ranks with the far-right government, described the plan bluntly, "It is a concentration camp. I am sorry." He added, "If Palestinians were forced to move to the camp, it would create a concentration camp... This is part of an ethnic cleansing." Israeli ministers responded not with reflection but with personal attacks. "Heritage" Minister Amichai Eliyahu smeared Olmert by invoking his past imprisonment, seeking to delegitimize his warnings rather than address the crimes being planned. The initiative has also sparked an internal rebellion within the Israeli military. According to reports from Channel 12, IOF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir voiced opposition to the plan in a closed-door security cabinet meeting. He warned that the displacement scheme would drain vital resources from military operations and captives recovery missions and could amount to a war crime. Zamir's office reportedly reiterated that the mass displacement of civilians is not part of the army's role, especially amid legal challenges from Israeli and international human rights advocates. Despite warnings from his military leadership, Netanyahu doubled down, reportedly rejecting the army's proposed timeline and budget. "I asked for a realistic plan," he said, pushing for an expedited displacement operation, one that finance officials say could cost taxpayers 15 billion shekels a year, draining public funds from health, education, and welfare. The political, legal, and economic opposition to the plan is further compounded by its role in sabotaging ceasefire talks. Hamas officials have rejected the "humanitarian city" as a deceptive euphemism for forced ghettoization. "This is utterly unacceptable and no Palestinian would agree to this," said senior Hamas official Husam Badran, who called the proposal a "deliberately obstructive demand" designed to collapse negotiations. Even Israeli officials acknowledge the plan's potential to derail diplomacy. Broadcaster Kan revealed that senior leadership privately admits that Hamas would never accept such terms, even with so-called "modifications." Meanwhile, Israeli war crimes continue unabated. On Sunday, airstrikes across Gaza killed at least 31 civilians, including children and families gathered near aid distribution points. A July 13 Reuters report confirmed that Israeli missiles killed eight children in the Nuseirat while they were collecting water, an act the military dismissed as a "technical malfunction." In reality, this strike is part of a broader campaign of collective punishment. According to the UN, over 798 Palestinians have been killed while trying to access food or aid. Entire neighborhoods have been obliterated, more than 900 health facilities destroyed, and Gaza's water, sanitation, and energy systems have collapsed. Over 58,000 Palestinians have been killed, and more than 1.7 million displaced, many multiple times. Despite this devastation, "Israel" continues to cloak its military objectives in humanitarian rhetoric. But as Olmert starkly put it, "When they build a camp where they 'clean' more than half of Gaza, then the inevitable understanding is that it is not to save [Palestinians]. It is to deport them, to push them, and to throw them away." Read more: Gaza aid line targeted: Dozens killed, UN confirms 798 dead at sites
Al Jazeera
3 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Critics slams Israel's plans for ‘concentration zone' in Gaza's Rafah
Critics slams Israel's plans for 'concentration zone' in Gaza's Rafah NewsFeed Displaced Palestinians and several Israeli politicians alike slam the Israeli government's plans for what it calls a 'humanitarian city' in Rafah. Critics say forcing Palestinians into the zone would amount to a 'concentration camp.' Video Duration 01 minutes 10 seconds 01:10 Video Duration 01 minutes 34 seconds 01:34 Video Duration 00 minutes 47 seconds 00:47 Video Duration 03 minutes 10 seconds 03:10 Video Duration 00 minutes 39 seconds 00:39 Video Duration 02 minutes 42 seconds 02:42 Video Duration 02 minutes 30 seconds 02:30
