Israel to confine Gaza’s entire population in concentration camp atop Rafah’s ruins

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz announced on Monday, July 7, that he instructed the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and his ministry to propose a plan to establish a restricted city on the ruins of Rafah, in the southern Gaza strip, where the entire population of the besieged enclave will be confined. 

Katz’s scheme aims to gradually confine all Palestinians in Gaza to a proposed zone in the Al-Mawasi area, where an initial 600,000 already-displaced people will be held, after undergoing security screening.

At a later stage, the rest of the two million Palestinians will be depopulated from their areas in other parts of the strip and concentrated in this narrow zone, which will be encircled by IOF troops, who will not allow anyone to leave.

Katz claimed that international organizations will be in charge of operating the zone, where four additional aid distribution points will be established.

The gates of concentrated camp will only be opened for “voluntary” displacement 

Critics have called the proposed militarized zone a “Nazi-style concentration camp”. The Israeli Defense Minister, however, brazenly called the camp a “humanitarian city”, which is obviously designed to push the Palestinians in Gaza to the brink of what he absurdly described as “voluntary migration”.

Confining the freedom of Gazans inside a concentration camp, then offering them to “voluntarily emigrate” to another country, after a two-year genocide, during which they have been starved to death, was also brought forward by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a dinner at the White House on Monday.

“If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave. It shouldn’t be a prison. It should be an open place, and give people a free choice,” Netanyahu said.

Right groups condemn the plan as a continuation of Israel’s ethnic cleansing policies against Palestinians

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor denounced the plan, saying that it “reflects a deliberate effort to depopulate Gaza and impose a new demographic reality that advances a colonial project to erase the Palestinian presence.”

The Geneva-based organization warned that the danger of the plan is exacerbated by Israel’s alleged “voluntary migration” offers, which confirm that the purpose of concentrating the whole population in the south “is not a humanitarian measure but a transitional phase within a systematic plan to depopulate Gaza.”

The organization also wrote that the plot is a direct continuation of the ethnic cleansing policies, which Israel has pursued since the Nakba of 1948, to erase the presence of Palestinians and uproot them from their land permanently.

Tamara Alrifai, director of external relations and communications at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), slammed the plan during an interview with Al Jazeera on Tuesday, July 8.

“Calling it a humanitarian city is almost an insult to the humanitarian principles, because there is nothing humanitarian or humane about seeking to confine the first 600,000, but then the entirety of the population in Gaza into a space that is highly vetted by the Israeli forces,” Alrifai said. 

“That essentially moves Gaza, previously known as the largest open-air prison in the world, to the most confined, the most overpopulated open-air prison in the world,” she added.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International condemned the proposed plan as “outrageous, inhumane and unlawful”.