Benjamin Netanyahu says Palestinians will be free to stay or go, but in this prospective open prison – which would violate international law – that is no choice at all
For almost two years, the world has watched the unfolding of horrors in Gaza: Palestinians trapped under their collapsed homes due to relentless Israeli bombings; the elderly, sick and young forced to walk tens of kilometres in the searing heat; and the rampant spread of disease and famine.
Those who have miraculously survived these atrocities may now be forced into what is effectively a gigantic internment camp – if Israel manages to get away with what it has dubbed a “humanitarian city” plan.
On 7 July, Israel’s defence minister briefed journalists on a plan to push Palestinians in the Gaza Strip into a city built atop the ruins of Rafah in the south. Legal scholars warn it amounts to a blueprint for mass imprisonment and could constitute a crime against humanity.
The plan effectively places Palestinians in a mass encampment project under the guise of humanitarian relief, while systematically stripping them of freedom of movement, due process, and other basic rights. Historically, urban centres around the world offer access to work, education, healthcare and greater movement. While the “city” proposed by Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, offers none of these, his scheme reveals a far starker truth: the forced funnelling of an entire population into an enclosure ahead of planned expulsion.
The plan to concentrate Palestinians in a militarised zone on the ruins of Rafah is merely a prelude to mass deportation – and Israel’s political leaders are not afraid to admit it. The defence minister has made clear that the goal is not merely displacement within Gaza, but the eventual removal of its entire population.
You do not need to be a lawyer or expert in international law to see this plan for what it really is: the final piece in a drawn-out Israeli scheme to get rid of Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave for good. The scheme then gives Palestinians the “choice” of leaving Gaza if they wish, but when faced with life in an open-air prison or permanent exile, the idea of choosing becomes a farce.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Katz has instructed the military to begin preparations for the site, where Palestinians would be subject to “security screening” and confined within a sealed zone under Israeli military control. Entry would be tightly regulated, and exit prohibited. The initial phase envisages the forced transfer of some 600,000 Palestinians – mostly displaced from the nearby al-Mawasi area – into the enclosure.
Since Donald Trump floated the idea earlier this year of “cleaning out” Gaza, senior Israeli officials — including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – have openly embraced forced expulsion, often framing it as a US-led initiative.
Since Trump floated the idea of ‘cleaning out’ Gaza, senior Israeli officials have openly embraced forced expulsion
Speaking from the White House last week, Netanyahu said the US and Israel were working with other governments to offer Palestinians “a better future” – language that barely veiled the agenda behind it.
“If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave,” Netanyahu said, moments before dining with President Trump.
According to Reuters, the $2bn (£1.5bn) blueprint – purportedly linked to the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – envisages the construction of camps to hold Palestinians both inside and potentially outside the Strip. GHF denies authorship, but slides outlining the scheme were reportedly circulated at the White House.
It would be a prelude to Trump’s real‑estate development vision for Gaza, which he outlined in February, constituting a “Riviera of the Middle East”. A “Mar‑a‑Gaza” of sorts, that would involve pushing out the population in order to redevelop it into a plush resort – with US influence and capital.
What makes this plan more chilling is its interaction with the long arc of Palestinian history. Gaza is home to generations of refugees – families originally expelled from villages and towns across historic Palestine in 1948. These are communities that already know what “emigration” means. They know what follows the bulldozers and the sealed perimeters. Katz’s plan doesn’t just echo this history; it exploits the trauma of past expulsions to manufacture conditions where flight appears to be the only option left.
This is not coincidental. Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, are now openly calling for new settlements in Gaza – an astonishing admission, given the context. It suggests a vision not of security, but of conquest: empty the land of its people, and repopulate it under permanent Israeli control. That this agenda is now being packaged in the language of humanitarianism makes it no less dangerous. It simply cloaks ethnic engineering in the language of relief.
The implications are profound. If Katz’s plan proceeds, it will not just deepen the catastrophe inside Gaza, it will also set a precedent for the dismantling of Palestinian political and territorial claims elsewhere. It will normalise expulsion under the banner of global coordination. And it will send a signal to Palestinians everywhere: that their right to remain on their land is conditional, revocable, and negotiable in the hands of others.
In the face of this, Palestinians are not just resisting military assault. They are resisting erasure. The refusal to leave, the refusal to disappear, is not just an act of survival. It is an insistence on historical memory and political presence – against a system that is trying, once again, to write them out.
Dalia Hatuqa is a journalist who specialises in Palestinian-Israeli affairs
Photograph by Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty
Social links
Copyright © 2025 Tortoise Media
All Rights Reserved
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.