Members of a private US security company direct displaced Palestinians as they gather to receive relief supplies at a distribution centre in the central Gaza Strip on 8 June 2025 (AFP\/Eyad Baba)<\/p>\n
Israel Katz is calling it a \u201chumanitarian city\u201d, from which Palestinians<\/a> will be encouraged to \u201cvoluntarily emigrate\u201d out of Gaza.<\/p>\n But analysts believe the Israeli<\/a> defence minister, who unveiled plans<\/a> this week to confine over two million Palestinians into a small area in southern Gaza, is using distorted language.<\/p>\n Experts in genocide and international law say the \u201chumanitarian city\u201d is more akin to a concentration camp.\u00a0And any talk of \u201cvoluntary emigration\u201d, they told Middle East Eye, should actually be read as forcible displacement.<\/p>\n The proposals are not fringe discussions. They were revealed by Katz, and appear to have the backing<\/a> of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n Here, we break\u00a0down what we know about the plan, how it relates to months-long US<\/a> and Israeli rhetoric of ejecting Palestinians from Gaza,\u00a0and\u00a0what the international legal implications are.<\/p>\n Katz said the plan would initially involve the ejection of 600,000 displaced Palestinians currently living in camps and makeshift homes in the al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza to an area in the ruins of Rafah\u00a0city.<\/p>\n Once they arrive in this new zone, security screenings would take place. They won\u2019t be allowed to leave once they\u2019ve entered, Katz said.<\/p>\n Eventually, the entire civilian population of over two million in Gaza would be confined to this small \u201ccity\u201d.<\/p>\n Four aid distribution centres are to be established within the area.<\/p>\n The defence minister initially said that Israeli forces would secure the perimeter of the site, but would not run it. He said Israel was seeking international partners to manage the city.<\/p>\n However, an Israeli official told Haaretz that Israel may run the area \u201cfor the time being\u201d.<\/p>\n The official said that Netanyahu thinks that if Israel doesn\u2019t manage the zone in the short term, \u201cno one will volunteer on their own accord to take control over the humanitarian matter, and Hamas will simply continue to rule\u201d.<\/p>\n The source added that the prime minister believed that countries like Saudi Arabia<\/a> and the UAE<\/a> would then be incentivised to take over Israeli control of the area, \u201cwithout being considered collaborators with Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n There is no evidence that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or any other country in the region has expressed a desire to be involved in the plans.<\/p>\n Katz said that once concentrated in the new city, Palestinians would be encouraged to \u201cvoluntarily\u201d leave the Gaza Strip for other countries, as part of an \u201cemigration plan\u201d he said \u201cwill happen\u201d.<\/p>\n He added that Netanyahu was leading efforts to find countries to take in Palestinians from Gaza.<\/p>\n There is not yet a clear indication as to when construction for such a new city would begin, or if it could go ahead without international backing.<\/p>\n Katz envisaged that if conditions permitted, the city would be built during a two-month pause in hostilities. Such a ceasefire is being negotiated between Israel and Hamas, via intermediaries, but is far from being agreed.<\/p>\n The planned city will violate multiple provisions of international humanitarian law (IHL), according to Eitan Diamond, a Jerusalem-based senior legal expert at the Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Centre.<\/p>\n He said that in accordance with the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, populations in occupied territories \u201cshall at all times be humanely treated\u201d, and may only exceptionally be placed under assigned residence or internment when there are \u201cimperative reasons of security\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cA blanket decision to enclose hundreds of thousands of people in a concentration camp or zone clearly falls well outside the lawful exception and would entail an unlawful deprivation of liberty in breach of IHL and of human rights law,\u201d Diamond told Middle East Eye.<\/p>\n The Fourth Geneva Convention also states that mass transfers of people from an occupied territory are prohibited.<\/p>\n \u201cCompelling residents of the occupied territory to move from their homes to another part of the occupied territory would constitute a prohibited act of forcible transfer,\u201d said Diamond.<\/p>\n In relation to Katz\u2019s \u201cemigration plan\u201d, Diamond added that compelling the population to leave the occupied territory altogether to move to another country \u201cwould constitute an act of deportation\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, implicating those responsible in the commission of a war crime.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that when such acts are committed as part of a systematic attack against a civilian population, which appears to be the case in Gaza, it implicates those responsible in the crime against humanity of deportation or forcible transfer.<\/p>\n IHL permits warring parties to temporarily transfer civilian populations for humanitarian reasons, however they must be allowed to return to their homes.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are often called \u2018safe zones\u2019, \u2018safe areas\u2019, \u2018buffer zones\u2019, and \u2018safe humanitarian zones\u2019,\u201d Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London, told MEE.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Katz is proposing is a \u2018humanitarian concentration camp\u2019, which is a very different story.\u201d<\/p>\n Diamond said that a warring party cannot move a population to avoid risks being caused by that same warring party. As such, he said, Israel\u2019s plan to displace hundreds of thousands of people into a very tight area could not be characterised as a lawful evacuation.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the contrary, such actions would almost certainly amount to an act of ethnic cleansing.\u201d<\/p>\n The short answer is no.<\/p>\n Katz\u2019s \u201cemigration plan\u201d is a manifestation of US President Donald Trump’s proposal to ethnically cleanse the enclave.<\/p>\n Trump said in February that Washington would \u201ctake over\u201d the Gaza Strip and eject the Palestinian population to other countries. In the meantime, the enclave would be turned into the \u201cRiviera of the Middle East\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n Katz has been a cheerleader for these plans for months. In March, he announced a new government agency<\/a> set up to oversee “voluntary departures” in compliance with Trump’s proposal.<\/p>\n \u201cThe phrase \u2018voluntary emigration\u2019 has long been used in Zionist ideology as a euphemism for expelling the Palestinian people from their homeland, including by creating coercive conditions that compel the natives to leave,\u201d Nimer Sultany, a Palestinian academic in public law at Soas University in London, told MEE.<\/p>\n Sultany noted that Katz had long threatened Palestinians with another Nakba, having made such remarks<\/a> in 2022 before the ongoing war.<\/p>\n The Nakba<\/a>, or “catastrophe”, refers to the forced displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homes in 1948.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is nothing voluntary about any emigration scheme that Israel devises in these circumstances,\u201d Martin Shaw, a prominent sociologist and author of several books on the subject of genocide, told MEE.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people of Gaza have been bombed out of their homes, lost their loved ones, starved and shot at when they try to get food.<\/p>\n \u201cIsrael will be using all this cruelty to force people to leave, and to remove their right to return as they have from previous generations of Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n Diamond said that it is well established under IHL that forcible displacements can be brought about by a coercive environment.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a party creates conditions that compel people to move to avert conditions that threaten their lives or wellbeing, their decision to move is not a genuine choice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is no more voluntary than the decision of a person who hands over their wallet to a gun robber saying \u2018your money or your life.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n So far, Israel has failed to find any countries willing to take displaced Palestinians from Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven that Israel\u2019s actions and future plans are blatantly illegal and constitute war crimes, third countries that willingly take part in the crime would be complicit in the violation of the law,\u201d said Gordon.<\/p>\n The UN said<\/a> on Wednesday that it stood firmly against any such plans to forcibly displace those in Gaza.<\/p>\nWhat do we know about the ‘humanitarian city’ plan?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
What does international law say?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Is the emigration plan really \u2018voluntary\u2019?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
How is the \u2018city\u2019 being described by experts?<\/strong><\/h2>\n