{"id":262458,"date":"2025-07-13T20:32:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T20:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/262458\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T20:32:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T20:32:12","slug":"humanitarian-city-would-be-concentration-camp-for-palestinians-says-former-israeli-pm-israel-gaza-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/262458\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Humanitarian city\u2019 would be concentration camp for Palestinians, says former Israeli PM | Israel-Gaza war"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201chumanitarian city\u201d Israel\u2019s defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing, Israel\u2019s former prime minister Ehud Olmert<\/a> has told the Guardian.<\/p>\n

Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Olmert said, and construction of the camp would mark an escalation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a concentration camp. I am sorry,\u201d he said, when asked about the plans laid out<\/a> by Israel Katz last week. Once inside, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave, except to go to other countries, Katz said.<\/p>\n

Katz has ordered the military to start drawing up operational plans for construction of the \u201chumanitarian city\u201d on the ruins of southern Gaza<\/a>, to house initially 600,000 people and eventually the entire Palestinian population.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new \u2018humanitarian city\u2019, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing. It hasn\u2019t yet happened,\u201d Olmert said. That would be \u201cthe inevitable interpretation\u201d of any attempt to create a camp for hundreds of thousands of people, he said.<\/p>\n

Olmert did not consider Israel\u2019s current campaign was ethnic cleansing because, he said, evacuating civilians to protect them from fighting was legal under international law, and Palestinians had returned to areas where military operations had finished.<\/p>\n

The \u201chumanitarian city\u201d project is backed by Israel\u2019s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel\u2019s refusal to withdraw from the area Katz envisages for the camp is a sticking point in the faltering negotiations<\/a> for a ceasefire deal, Israeli media have reported.<\/p>\n

Olmert said that after months of violent rhetoric, including calls from ministers to \u201ccleanse\u201d Gaza and projects to build Israeli settlements there, government claims that the \u201chumanitarian city\u201d aimed to protect Palestinians were not credible.<\/p>\n

Olmert, who led Israel from 2006 to 2009, called extremist cabinet ministers \u2018the enemy from within\u2019. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they build a camp where they [plan to] \u2018clean\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israeli human rights lawyers and scholars have described<\/a> the plan as a blueprint for crimes against humanity and some have warned<\/a> that if implemented, \u201cunder certain conditions it could amount to the crime of genocide\u201d.<\/p>\n

Other Israelis who have described the planned \u201chumanitarian city\u201d as a concentration camp have been attacked for invoking comparisons to Nazi Germany, when the government says it is designed to protect Palestinians. Yad Vashem, Israel\u2019s Holocaust memorial centre, accused one journalist<\/a> of \u201ca serious and inappropriate distortion of the meaning of the Holocaust\u201d.<\/p>\n

Olmert, who led Israel from 2006 to 2009, spoke to the Guardian on the day funerals were held in the occupied West Bank for two Palestinian men, one an American citizen, who had been killed by Israeli settlers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The latest deaths came after a campaign of violent intimidation that has forced the residents of several villages to flee their homes<\/a> over the past two years.<\/p>\n

The attacks were war crimes, Olmert said. \u201c[It is] unforgivable. Unacceptable. There are continuous operations organised, orchestrated in the most brutal, criminal manner by a large group.\u201d<\/p>\n

The attackers are often called \u201chilltop youth<\/a>\u201d in Israel and described as fringe extremists. Olmert said he preferred the term \u201chilltop atrocities\u201d to describe the young men whose campaign of spiralling violence was carried out with near-total impunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no way that they can operate in such a consistent, massive and widespread manner without a framework of support and protection which is provided by the [Israeli] authorities in the [occupied Palestinian] territories,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Olmert described extremist cabinet ministers who backed violence in Gaza and the West Bank \u2013 where they have authorised major settlement expansions and control law enforcement with a view to expanding the borders of Israel \u2013 as a greater threat to the country\u2019s long-term security than any external foe. \u201cThese guys are the enemy from within,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Extreme suffering in Gaza and settler atrocities in the West Bank were fuelling growing anger against Israel that cannot all be written off as antisemitism, Olmert said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the United States there is more and more and more expanding expressions of hatred to Israel,\u201d he said. \u201cWe make a discount to ourselves saying: \u2018They are antisemites.\u2019 I don\u2019t think that they are only antisemites, I think many of them are anti-Israel because of what they watch on television, what they watch on social networks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a painful but normal reaction of people who say: \u2018Hey, you guys have crossed every possible line.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Attitudes inside Israel might start to shift only when Israelis started to feel the burden of international pressure, he said, calling for stronger international intervention in the absence of serious political opposition at home. He also criticised the Israeli media for its failure to report on violence against Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Olmert said he could not refrain \u2018from accusing this government of being responsible for war crimes\u2019. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Olmert backed the initial campaign against Hamas after the 7 October 2023 attacks. But he said that, by this spring, when the Israeli government \u201cpublicly and in a brutal manner\u201d abandoned negotiations for a permanent end to fighting, he had reached the conclusion his country was committing war crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAshamed and heartbroken\u201d that a war of self-defence had become something else, he decided to speak out. \u201cWhat can I do to change the attitude, except for number one, recognising these evils, and number two, to criticise them and to make sure the international public opinion knows there are [other] voices, many voices in Israel?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

He attributed what he called war crimes to negligence and a willingness to tolerate unconscionable levels of death and devastation, rather than an organised campaign of brutality. \u201c[Did commanders] give an order? Never,\u201d Olmert said.<\/p>\n

Instead, he believes the military looked away when things were done that would inevitably \u201ccause the killing of a large number of non-involved people\u201d. He said: \u201cThat is why I cannot refrain from accusing this government of being responsible for war crimes committed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the devastation in Gaza, as the last Israeli premier to seriously attempt to reach a negotiated solution with Palestinians, Olmert still hopes that a two-state solution is possible.<\/p>\n

He is working with the former Palestinian foreign minister Nasser al-Kidwa to push for one internationally, and even believes that a historic settlement could be in reach \u2013 an end to the war in Gaza in exchange for normalisation of ties with Saudi Arabia \u2013 if only Netanyahu was able or willing to take it.<\/p>\n

Instead Olmert was stunned to see Netanyahu, a man who has an arrest warrant for war crimes from the international criminal court, nominating Donald Trump<\/a> for a Nobel peace prize.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Quique Kierszenbaum<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u201chumanitarian city\u201d Israel\u2019s defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-262458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114847832054553857","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}