Netanyahu backs controversial Gaza “humanitarian city” plan in Rafah

07/14/2025 / By Laura Harris

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed Defense Minister Israel Katz’s plan to relocate Gaza’s entire civilian population, estimated at 600,000 initially, into a newly constructed “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza.
The plan involves screening civilians at the camp entrance, providing basic services like food and medical care, but prohibiting residents from leaving. Northern Gaza would become a free-fire zone for Israeli military operations against Hamas.
While the IDF will secure the site, Israel intends for international or regional actors to manage daily operations and aid distribution. The camp’s construction may begin during an upcoming ceasefire.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and other organizations warn that the plan amounts to an organized act of genocide, citing life-threatening conditions, confinement and mass displacement as tools of population destruction.
Euro-Med Monitor reports that at least 758 Palestinians have been killed and over 5,000 injured at or near aid centers in the proposed zone, denouncing the “humanitarian” label as a cover for ethnic cleansing and demographic engineering.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed support for a controversial plan spearheaded by Defense Minister Israel Katz to relocate the entire civilian population of the Gaza Strip into a new “humanitarian city” to be constructed on the ruins of Rafah.

The plan, described by Israeli officials as a humanitarian solution, involves transferring hundreds of thousands of Gazans, estimated at around 600,000 people, from central and northern areas of the Strip to a tent city in the south. The proposed relocation is framed as part of a broader strategy to isolate and neutralize Hamas fighters believed to be concentrated in the northern Gaza Strip. Civilians would be screened at the entrance to the camp in Rafah, and the northern area would be treated as a free-fire zone for Israeli military operations.

Katz formally instructed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on July 7 to begin preparing the site. He said the camp would provide basic humanitarian needs, including hospitals and food supplies. Once inside the zone, however, residents would not be allowed to leave.

While the IDF would secure the area, it would not manage daily operations or distribute aid, responsibilities that Israel hopes will be assumed by international or regional partners. The plan is reportedly being coordinated by the Defense Ministry’s Director General, Amir Baram, a former deputy chief of staff of the IDF.

While construction could begin during the 60-day ceasefire currently under negotiation with Hamas, the site may take months to complete. Netanyahu is reportedly open to Israel managing the compound in the interim until international actors – possibly the UAE or Saudi Arabia – step in.

Human rights groups warn of genocidal plan to seal off two million Palestinians in Gaza

In line with the reported plan, human rights observers warned that the scheme amounts to a dangerous escalation of an ongoing genocidal campaign against Palestinians.

“The most dangerous aspect of this plan is the concentration of nearly two million Palestinians in a devastated, sealed-off area deprived of basic living conditions and subject to severe movement restrictions. This constitutes an organized act of genocide, involving the deliberate imposition of life-threatening conditions aimed at the gradual destruction of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip through starvation, humiliation, mass detention and forced subjugation,” Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, an independent and nonprofit organization for the protection of human rights, wrote in its article.

The organization warned that aid centers within the so-called safe zone are anything but secure. It then revealed that at least 758 Palestinians have been killed and over 5,000 injured at or near aid distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation since late May.

“The use of misleading terms such as ‘humanitarian zone’ in the context of ongoing crimes, including bombing, starvation and forced displacement, is a blatant attempt to conceal a full-fledged crime and mislead the international community. The plan has no genuine humanitarian dimension; it serves only as a cover for a clear strategic objective to forcibly alter the demographic composition of the Gaza Strip and gradually depopulate it,” it said. (Related: Head of Israeli town suggests flattening Gaza Strip like Auschwitz concentration camp.)

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Netanyahu backs controversial Gaza “humanitarian city” plan in Rafah

Human rights groups warn of genocidal plan to seal off two million Palestinians in Gaza

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