The “humanitarian city” proposed by the Minister of Defense to be built on its ruins would be a concentration camp and forcing them to get in would be ethnic cleansing, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert () told the Guardian.
War crimes in Gaza
Israel is already committing war crimes in and, said Olmert, and the construction of the camp would mark escalation.
Concentration camp The “Humanitarian City” in Gaza
“It’s a concentration camp. I’m sorry, “he said, when asked about the plans presented by Israel Katz last week. As soon as they get in, the Palestinians will not be able to leave except to go to other countries, Katz said.
Katz ordered the army to start drawing up operational plans for the construction of the “humanitarian city” in the ruins of southern Gaza, which will initially accommodate 600,000 people and eventually the entire Palestinian population.
“Ethnic cleansing the expulsion to the” Humanitarian City “»
“If the Palestinians are deported to the new” humanitarian city, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing. This has not happened yet, “Olmert said. This is the “inevitable interpretation” of any attempt to create a camp for hundreds of thousands of people, he said.
Olmert did not believe that the current Israeli campaign is ethnic cleansing because, as he said, the evacuation of civilians to protect them from battles is legal in accordance with international law and the Palestinians returned to areas where military operations were completed.
The Netanyahu Plan for the “Humanitarian City”
July 13, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer
The plan of the “humanitarian city” is supported by the Israeli prime minister, and Israel’s refusal to retire from the area that Catz provides for the camp is a point of engagement in the offensive negotiations for a ceasefire agreement, Israeli media reported.
‘Israel’s claims’ are not convinced’
Olmert said that after months of violent rhetoric, including calls for ministers to “clear” Gaza and plans to build Israeli settlements there, government claims that the “humanitarian city” was aimed at protecting the Palestinians.
“When they build a camp where they plan to integrate more than half the gauze, then the inevitable understanding of this strategy is that it is not to save the Palestinians. They are to deport them, to push them and to throw them away. There is no other explanation to see. “
“Crime against humanity, crime of genocide”
July 12, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Israeli lawyers and scholars of human rights have described the plan as a plan for crimes against humanity, and some have warned that if implemented, “under certain circumstances it could be equivalent to the crime of genocide”.
Other Israelis who have described the planned “humanitarian city” as a concentration camp, have been attacked because they cite comparisons with Nazi Germany, while the government says it has been designed to protect the Palestinians. Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Center, accused a journalist of “serious and inappropriate distortion of the concept of Holocaust”.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Reuters/Menahem Kahana/Pool (Jerusalem)
Olmert, who led Israel from 2006 to 2009, on the day when the funerals of two Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank, who had been killed by Israeli settlers.
The last deaths came after a violent bullying campaign that forced the residents of many villages to leave their homes over the last two years.
‘Youth of Hills’ and War Crimes
REUTERS/Ramadan Abed TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
The attacks were war crimes, Olmert said. “It’s unforgivable. Unacceptable. There are constant businesses organized, orchestrated in the most brutal, criminal way by a great group. “
Attackers are often called Israel “youth of the hills” and are described as marginal extremists. Olmert said he prefers the term “hill’s atrocities” to describe the young men whose campaign of increasing violence is being carried out with almost complete impunity.
“There is no way they can work in such a consistent, massive and extensive way without a framework for support and protection provided by the Israeli authorities in the occupied Palestinian territories,” he said.
“Inner enemy of Israel the extremists of his cabinet”
Olmert described the ministers’ ministers as extremists who support violence in Gaza and the West Bank- where they have approved significant settlements and control law to expand Israel’s borders- as a greater threat to the long-term security of the country. “These guys are the inner enemy,” he said.
Hate in Israel is not only anti -Semitism
The extreme suffering in Gaza and the atrocities of the settlers on the West Bank supply the growing rage against Israel, which cannot be recorded as anti -Semitism, Olmert said.
“In the United States there are increasingly and more expanding hate expressions towards Israel,” he said. “We make a discount on ourselves by saying,” They are anti -Semites. ” I don’t think it’s just anti-Semites, I think many of them are anti-Israelis because of those who see on television, those who see on social networks.
“This is a painful but normal reaction to the people who say, ‘Well, you have exceeded every possible limit.'”
International pressure is necessary
The stance inside Israel can only start to change when the Israelis begins to feel the burden of international pressure, he said, demanding stronger international intervention in the absence of serious political opposition. It also criticized Israeli media for their failure to report violence against the Palestinians.
There are many other voices in Israel
Olmert supported the initial campaign against Hamas following the attacks of October 7, 2023. But he said that, until spring, when the Israeli government “publicly and brutally” abandoned the negotiations for permanent ending of the battles, he had come to the conclusion that his country was concluded.
“Ashamed and overwhelmed” that a self -defense war had become something else, he decided to speak. “What can I do to change the attitude, apart from recognizing these bad ones first and secondly, to criticize them and assure that international public opinion knows that they exist [άλλες] Voices, many voices in Israel? ” wondered.
A two -state solution is possible
Despite the catastrophe in Gaza, as the last Israeli prime minister who has seriously attempted to achieve a solution with negotiations with the Palestinians, Olmert still hopes that a two -state solution is possible.
Shock from Netanyahu’s Nobel Peace Prize to Trump
He works with former Palestinian Foreign Minister Nasser al -Kidva to push internationally for such a solution and still believes that a historical settlement could be possible – the end of the Gaza war in return for normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia –
Instead, Olmert remained unhappy when he saw Netanyahu, a man who has a warrant for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, to propose Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
