Defence minister Israel Katz’s plans for an internment camp on the ruins of Rafah mark an escalation beyond incitement to war crimes, already a mainstay of Israel’s political discourse, to operational planning for mass forced displacement.
Israeli lawmakers including cabinet ministers have repeatedly called for the “cleansing” of Gaza, in the wake of Hamas’s cross-border attacks on 7 October, backing the forced deportation of Palestinians to other countries and new Israeli settlements in the territory.
However, Katz was the first senior cabinet member to lay out, in a briefing on Monday to Israeli media, measures to implement the displacement of Palestinians from most of Gaza. He said he had given orders to plan a “humanitarian city”, to hold Palestinians who would not be allowed to leave.
Some would be moved to other countries, Katz said. Israeli officials describe this as “voluntary” departure but the conditions in Gaza mean no displacement inside the territory or departure from it can be seen as consensual in legal terms, human rights lawyers say.
Michael Sfard, one of Israel’s leading human rights lawyers, said: “This is not an expression of opinion or desire. Katz ordered the army to prepare. It has more meaning, because this guy holds the administrative power to actually do it.”
Katz has the backing of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, currently meeting Donald Trump in Washington DC, Haaretz newspaper reported on Tuesday.
However, experts say a political commitment does not mean Katz will be able to build the “humanitarian city” he described or force the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, even using coercive measures including controlling access to food.
Alon Pinkas, an analyst and former top Israeli diplomat, said: “The plan is by definition unviable and impractical, without even getting to the moral depravity of forcing a desolate million people into a de facto internment camp.
“Katz has a tendency to make outlandish, unfounded, chaos-stirring remarks (on Gaza, on Iran) that have the life expectancy of a mayfly.”
However, it would be foolish to dismiss the plan to turn Rafah into a camp as purely political posturing given reported investment into planning for mass forced transfers, Pinkas added.
“There has been a feasibility study (by the Boston Consulting Group), so this may portend serious regard,” he said. Two partners from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) modelled the costs of “relocating” Palestinians from Gaza, the Financial Times reported last week. BCG has fully disavowed the work and said it was unauthorised.
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.
Sfard is representing three Israeli reservists who in May filed a legal petition against Israel’s military and government over the potential forced transfer of Palestinians.
They argued that a reported objective of the “Gideon’s Chariots” operation in Gaza, to “concentrate and move the population”, violated international law.
“The IDF is being asked to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity,” their petition said, urging an intervention by the courts.
Judges gave authorities weeks to respond, and on Monday’s deadline the office of Israel’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, denied that displacing or “concentrating” Palestinians was an operational goal.
“The IDF recommends and allows civilians who are located in combat zones to leave for their own protection, as long as IDF operations are ongoing in the area,” the letter said.
“It should be emphasized that concentration and mobilization of civilian population is not a part of the operation’s aims and certainly the IDF is not coercing movement of population within or out of the Strip.”
International law allows temporary evictions to protect civilians from hostilities but only if they meet key criteria, including ensuring that people forced to leave can return home, Sfard said.
“The prohibition on forced transfer and deportation is one of the oldest in modern international law, it dates back to the American civil war. So this it not something new, or that is still being debated in the international legal community.,” he said.
“Demographic engineering can be done by expulsion of people or bringing people into an area. Both are war crimes and it seems this government wants to do both.”
Katz, who is apparently at odds with his own chief of staff about the Gaza campaign, made clear that Palestinians would not be allowed to leave his “humanitarian city”, which will cover less than a quarter of Gaza’s current territory.
Katz’s spokesperson Adir Dahan did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the ministry said only Dahan could represent him. The IDF declined comment.
