Former Israeli PMs slam Netanyahu's plans for 'concentration camps' in Gaza

Two top Israeli politicians have criticised plans by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to set up what it calls a "humanitarian city" in Gaza's Rafah, stating that the proposal would amount to interning Palestinians in "concentration camps".

Former prime ministers Yair Lapid and Ehud Olmert levelled the criticism yesterday as Israeli forces continued to bombard Gaza, killing at least 95 Palestinians over the course of the day, reports Al Jazeera.

Lapid, the leader of Israel's biggest opposition party, told Israeli Army Radio that "nothing good" would come out of the plans to establish the "humanitarian city" in 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.

Lapid served as Israel's prime minister for six months in 2022.

According to the Israeli government, the "humanitarian city" will initially house 600,000 displaced Palestinians currently living in tents in the overcrowded area of al-Mawasi along Gaza's southern coast. But eventually, the enclave's entire population of more than two million people is to be moved there.

Olmert, who served as Israel's prime minister from 2006 to 2009, also slammed the Israeli plan.

"It is a concentration camp. I am sorry," he told the United Kingdom's Guardian newspaper.

"If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new 'humanitarian city', then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing," he said. 

"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."

Humanitarian officials also have said the plan for the internment camp in Rafah would lay the groundwork for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, which has been banned by Israel, asked last week if the plan would result in a "second Nakba". The term refers to the 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".

The Israeli government insisted the transfer of Palestinians to the internment camp in Rafah would be "voluntary" while Netanyahu and United States President Donald Trump have continued to tout their proposal to forcibly transfer all of the Palestinians in Gaza out of the enclave.