"If Exiting It Is Prohibited, Then It Is a Concentration Camp": Lapid Slams Israel's “Humanitarian City” Plan in Gaza's Rafah
Occupied Palestine (Quds News Network)- Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s biggest opposition party, slammed the so-called “humanitarian city” the Israeli occupation announced it wants to build on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza as a “concentration camp.”
Lapid, who served as Israel’s prime minister for six months in 2022, told Israeli Army Radio that “nothing good” would come out of the plans to establish the “humanitarian city” on the ruins of the city of Rafah.
“It’s a bad idea from every possible perspective – security, political, economic, logistical,” he said.
“I don’t prefer to describe a humanitarian city as a concentration camp, but if exiting it is prohibited, then it is a concentration camp,” he added.
Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also said the so-called “humanitarian city” would in fact be a “concentration camp.”
“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,” Olmert told the Guardian.
Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Olmer said, and construction of the camp would mark an escalation.
“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,” Olmert added.
Olmert said that after months of violent rhetoric, including calls from ministers to “cleanse” Gaza and projects to build Israeli settlements there, the Israeli occupation government claims that the “humanitarian city” aimed to protect Palestinians were not credible.
“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 added.
Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced an Israeli plan to forcibly concentrate Palestinians into a so-called “humanitarian city” built over the ruins of Rafah. “Our goal is to push them toward emigration,” he noted.
Katz said the Israeli army is preparing to transfer initially around 600,000 Palestinians from the al-Mawasi area into the new encampment and eventually the entire Palestinian population.
Entry into the area will be permitted only after security checks, and residents will not be allowed to leave. “Our goal is to push them toward emigration,” Katz said bluntly.
He described this as Phase One of a broader Israeli strategy to control Gaza’s population after the war. He said the city would be secured remotely by Israeli forces, but Israel would not distribute food or directly manage the area. Instead, Katz said Israel hopes to bring in international actors to oversee the population.
Katz confirmed Israel’s long-term goal: to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza. He said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is already in talks to find third countries willing to accept them. “The migration plan must be implemented,” Katz declared.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, asked last week if the plan would result in a “second Nakba,” the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes during the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel.
“This would de facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt for the Palestinians, displaced over and over across generations,” Lazzarini said, adding that it would “deprive Palestinians of any prospects of a better future in their homeland”.
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