{"id":311817,"date":"2025-07-09T06:47:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T06:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=311817"},"modified":"2025-07-11T06:05:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T06:05:25","slug":"israeli-plan-for-forced-transfer-of-gazas-population-a-blueprint-for-crimes-against-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=311817","title":{"rendered":"Israeli plan for forced transfer of Gaza\u2019s population \u2018a blueprint for crimes against humanity\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma Graham-Harrison \u2013 The Guardian July 7, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Israel\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Israel Katz said he has ordered Israel\u2019s military to prepare for establishing a camp, which he called a \u201chumanitarian city\u201d, on the ruins of the city of Rafah, Haaretz newspaper reported.<\/p>\n

Palestinians would go through \u201csecurity screening\u201d before entering, and once inside would not be allowed to leave, Katz said at a briefing for Israeli journalists.<\/p>\n

Israeli forces would control the perimeter of the site and initially \u201cmove\u201d 600,000 Palestinians into the area \u2013 mostly people currently displaced in the al-Mawasi area.<\/p>\n

Eventually the entire population of Gaza would be housed there, and Israel aims to implement \u201cthe emigration plan, which will happen\u201d, Haaretz quoted him<\/a> saying.<\/p>\n

Since Donald Trump suggested at the start of the year that large numbers of Palestinians should leave Gaza to \u201cclean out\u201d<\/a> the strip, Israeli politicians including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have enthusiastically promoted forced deportation, often presenting it as a US project.<\/p>\n

Katz\u2019s scheme breaks international law, said Michael Sfard, one of Israel\u2019s leading human rights lawyers. It also directly contradicted<\/a> claims made hours earlier by the office of Israel\u2019s military chief, which said in a letter that Palestinians were only displaced inside Gaza for their own protection.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Katz) laid out an operational plan for a crime against humanity. It is nothing less than that,\u201d Sfard said. \u201cIt is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza<\/a> Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the government still calls the deportation \u2018voluntary\u2019, people in Gaza are under so many coercive measures that no departure from the strip can be seen in legal terms as consensual.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you drive someone out of their homeland that would be a war crime, in the context of a war. If it\u2019s done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime against humanity,\u201d Sfard added.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Work on the \u201chumanitarian city\u201d at the heart of Katz\u2019s plans could start during a ceasefire, the defence minister said. Netanyahu is leading efforts to find countries willing to \u201ctake in\u201d Palestinians, he added.<\/p>\n

Speaking from the White House on Monday, Netanyahu said the US and Israel were working with other countries who would give Palestinians a \u201cbetter future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave,\u201d Netanyahu said, as he prepared to have dinner with Trump.<\/p>\n

Israeli politicians including the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, have also been enthusiastic advocates of new Israeli settlements in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Plans for the construction of camps called \u201chumanitarian transit areas\u201d, 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.<\/p>\n

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, \u201care not a GHF document\u201d.<\/p>\n

Concerns about Israel\u2019s plans to displace Palestinians had previously been raised by military orders for the operation launched this spring.<\/p>\n

Sfard represented three reservists who filed a petition to Israel\u2019s courts, demanding the military revoke commands to \u201cmobilise and concentrate\u201d the civilian population of Gaza, and to prohibit any plans for the deportation of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n

In a letter responding to their claims, the office of Israel\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

That statement was directly contradicted by Katz, said Prof Amos Goldberg, historian of the Holocaust at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

The defence minister laid out clear plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Goldberg said, and the creation of \u201ca concentration camp or a transit camp for Palestinians before they expel them\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is neither humanitarian nor a city,\u201d he said of Katz\u2019s planned holding area for Palestinians.<\/p>\n

\u201cA city is a place where you have possibilities of work, of earning money, of making connections and freedom of movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are hospitals, schools, universities and offices. This is not what they have in mind. It will not be a livable place, just as the \u2018safe areas\u2019 are unliveable now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katz\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWhat will happen if the Palestinians will not accept this solution and revolt, because they are not completely helpless?\u201d<\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is history about to repeat itself with Israeli plans to relocate displaced Palestinians in a camp on the ruins of Rafah; recalling earlier concentration camps run by the British during the Boer War the Nazis?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":309663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=311817"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311828,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311817\/revisions\/311828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/309663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=311817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=311817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=311817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}