Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has harshly criticized Israel’s proposed “humanitarian city”—a tent compound planned on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza—calling it a “detention camp” and describing the forced relocation of Palestinians into it as ethnic cleansing.
اضافة اعلان
In an interview with The Guardian published Monday, Olmert stated:
“It is a detention camp. I’m sorry.”
He continued:
“If they [the Palestinians] are deported to the new humanitarian city, this can be considered part of an ethnic cleansing.”
Olmert explained that this would be the “inevitable interpretation” of any attempt to relocate hundreds of thousands of people into a camp-like setup.
The plan includes relocating around 600,000 Palestinians in the first phase, following strict security screenings. Once transferred, they would not be allowed to return to the areas they were displaced from.
According to Israel’s official broadcaster, the so-called humanitarian city would be built between the Philadelphi Corridor and Morag in southern Gaza. All Gaza Palestinians would be concentrated there, with mechanisms put in place to promote what Israel refers to as “voluntary emigration” outside the Strip.
Olmert cast doubt on Israeli government claims that the city aims to protect Palestinians, calling such claims “lacking in credibility.”
He said:
“When they build a camp and plan to remove more than half the population of Gaza, the only logical interpretation is that this isn’t to rescue people—but to expel and push them away. I cannot see it any other way.”
Olmert emphasized that Israel is already committing war crimes in both Gaza and the West Bank, and the construction of such a camp would mark a dangerous escalation.
He made these remarks during an interview with The Guardian on the same day that two Palestinian men—one of whom held U.S. citizenship—were buried in the occupied West Bank after being killed by Israeli settlers.
On Sunday, hundreds of Palestinians held funerals for the two men, who were killed on Friday in an armed settler attack east of Ramallah.
Commenting on the settler violence in the West Bank, Olmert said:
“These are war crimes—unforgivable and unacceptable. What’s happening are organized, brutal operations carried out by a large group [of settlers].”
While Israeli media often refers to such attackers as the “Hilltop Youth”, Olmert suggested a more accurate term would be “Hilltop Atrocities”, denouncing their escalating campaign of violence.
“They cannot be acting in such a coordinated, large-scale manner without a framework of support and protection provided by the [Israeli] authorities in the occupied territories,” he said.
According to the Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, Israeli settlers carried out 2,153 attacks across the occupied West Bank during the first half of this year, resulting in the deaths of six Palestinians.
Simultaneously with the genocide in Gaza, Israel has escalated military and settler assaults in the West Bank, including Jerusalem. According to Palestinian data, at least 998 Palestinians have been killed, around 7,000 wounded, and more than 18,000 arrested.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel—with full U.S. backing—has been committing what rights groups and international bodies describe as a genocide in Gaza, leaving over 196,000 Palestinians dead or wounded, most of them women and children, with more than 10,000 missing and hundreds of thousands forcibly displaced.
— (Anadolu Agency)
