‘Nothing humanitarian or humane’ about Israel’s ‘concentration camp’ plan for Gaza
Tamara Alrifai, a senior communications director at the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), explained to Al Jazeera what is wrong with the so-called “humanitarian city” plan in Gaza that is being pursued by Israel.
“Calling it a humanitarian city is an insult to the humanitarian principles,” Tamara Alrifai said.
UNRWA said “this plan would de-facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt for the Palestinians”.
“We cannot be silent and complicit of such large-scale forced displacement,” it added.
“There is nothing humanitarian or humane” about the so-called humanitarian city Israeli officials are talking about, tells our UNRWA Director of External Relations and Communications @TamaraAlrifai to @AJEnglish
This plan would de-facto create massive concentration camps at the… pic.twitter.com/ZjuhC17pZn
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) July 10, 2025
Ben-Gvir renews calls for expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right Israeli security minister, has released a statement that appears to draw a line between the recent stabbing attacks we have been covering in the occupied West Bank and what he considers excessive concessions by the Israeli government in Gaza.
“When you negotiate with a terrorist organisation about the release of terrorists, and at the same time you breathe life into Hamas with ‘humanitarian’ aid, then unfortunately we see the results,” he said.
“And we saw it today in Gush Etzion, we saw it in the attempted kidnapping of soldiers, we saw it in the increase in terrorism. And I turned to the prime minister, and I tell him one thing: ‘Prime minister – it is forbidden to negotiate with them, the way is to crush, occupy and encourage voluntary immigration. Only in this way will we defeat terrorism!'”
While Ben-Gvir refers to “voluntary” emigration out of Gaza, experts in international law have said that pushing Palestinians to leave the enclave after creating unbearable conditions there would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
‘No other way to describe it but establishment of concentration camp’
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy says there is little opposition in Israel to the country’s latest forced displacement plan in Gaza, which top United Nations officials say will create a concentration camp for Palestinians in the south of the enclave.
“There’s no other way to describe it but an establishment of a concentration camp under the Jewish state, which was established out of the ashes of the Holocaust,” Levy, a columnist at Israeli newspaper Haaretz, told Al Jazeera.
He explained that there has been – and continues to be – very little pushback in Israel against the government’s policies in Gaza.
“For most of the Israelis, the only people who live right now in Gaza are the [Israeli] hostages. All the rest don’t interest them and don’t exist, and therefore there are no guilty feelings and no discussions and no shame,” Levy said.
He added that the United States – Israel’s top global ally – will support the Israeli government’s plan, which is based on US President Donald Trump’s own push to force Palestinians out of Gaza. “The first idea of transferring all the people from Gaza was [Trump’s],” Levy said. “He legitimised it with all those stupid talking [points] about ‘the Riviera of Gaza’.”
