Former Israeli PM Says Israel’s Plan To Build ‘Humanitarian City’ in Gaza Amounts to Concentration Camp

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview published on Sunday that the Israeli government’s plan to build a so-called “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah amounts to a concentration camp, warning that if the plan is carried out, it could be considered ethnic cleansing.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz first announced last week that the government wants to concentrate the entire civilian population of Gaza into a camp in Rafah. Katz said that once Palestinians are inside the camp, they cannot leave.

“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,” Olmert told The Guardian. “If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing. It hasn’t yet happened.”