Inside Netanyahu’s Rafah ‘Humanitarian City’: Why Ex-Israeli PMs Call It a ‘Concentration Camp’ And Gaza’s Forced Removal Plan

Tel Aviv: As bulldozers crush Rafah into dust faster than aid trucks can reach its borders, two former Israeli prime ministers have shattered the silence. They say, in blunt and blistering terms, that the so-called “humanitarian city” planned by the Netanyahu government is nothing short of a “concentration camp” in disguise.

Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s largest Opposition party, and Ehud Olmert, who led Israel through a brutal war in Gaza, are sounding alarms louder than air raid sirens. Their warning cuts through the fog of war – the so-called city for displaced Palestinians in Gaza is not a shelter. It is a cage.

“If no one can leave, it is a concentration camp. It is a disaster waiting to happen – militarily, politically, economically and logistically. Nothing about this makes sense,” Lapid said on Israeli Army Radio.

Olmert, speaking to The Guardian, did not hesitate either. “Call it what it is. It is a concentration camp. If you deport hundreds of thousands into that enclosure, what else is it? This is ethnic cleansing in slow motion,” he said.

This is not speculation. Satellite images confirm what Palestinians have been screaming into the void for months. On April 4, there were around 15,800 buildings reduced to rubble in Rafah. By July 4, that number rose to 28,600. Every flattened home tells a story. Every crater is a grave. The ground is being for relocation of Palestinians.

The Netanyahu government claims it is voluntary. That the new “humanitarian city” in al-Mawasi will shelter 600,000 people at first, then perhaps over 2 million. That it will be safe, secure and temporary. But UN officials say that is a “lie” and a “dangerous and deliberate deception”.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is banned from operating in Gaza by Israel, called it what Palestinians fear it truly is – “a second Nakba”. He warned of a future where entire generations are penned into “massive concentration camps on the border with Egypt”, cut off from their land, their homes, their rights and any hope.

Behind the scenes, another name is quietly appearing in documents and disaster zones alike – the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). It is a private aid group backed by U.S. and Israeli entities and the only one currently allowed by the Israeli military to distribute food. But its mission goes far beyond meals.

According to a Reuters investigation, the GHF is building “humanitarian transit areas” inside Gaza and possibly outside it where Palestinians could be housed, “deradicalised” and “prepared for relocation”. The GHF’s blueprint reads more like a deportation roadmap than a relief plan.

Their so-called safe zones have already become death traps. Since the GHF began operations in May, Israeli forces have killed at least 800 Palestinians while they were trying to access food near aid points run by the foundation. It is, in effect, a feeding ground and a killing field.

Israel wants the GHF to replace the United Nations entirely and to control aid and control movement. Human rights activists warn this is not humanitarianism. It is control through starvation and exile by siege.

Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, did not mince words. “This is about the engineered collapse of Gaza. They want to concentrate Palestinians, starve them, shoot at them and force them to leave ‘voluntarily’. That is the endgame,” he told Al Jazeera.

He called the plan a pressure cooker designed to give Gazans only two choices – die where they are or flee into oblivion.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu is not hiding his ambitions. In a recent dinner with U.S. President Donald Trump, the two men spoke openly of “working closely” to find “countries” that might accept Palestinians from Gaza. Trump said “something good will happen soon”. The good, apparently, is for anyone but the Palestinians.

Arab nations have rejected the scheme outright. Palestinians, too, say they will never abandon their land. But the walls are closing in.

Every word from the Israeli leadership, every blast in Rafah and every tent erected on ruins point to a terrifying truth – a new Nakba is underway, and this time, it is being broadcast in real time.

And in the middle of it all, two former Israeli prime ministers are now asking the same question the world cannot ignore- how long before this “humanitarian city” becomes history’s next shame?