Israel Katz told journalists on Monday he wanted to
establish a "humanitarian city" on the ruins of the city of Rafah to
initially house about 600,000 Palestinians - and eventually the whole 2.1
million population.
He said the goal was to bring people
inside after security screening to ensure they were not Hamas operatives, and
that they would not be allowed to leave.
If conditions allowed, he added, construction would begin
during a 60-day ceasefire that Israel and Hamas are trying to negotiate.
One Israeli human rights lawyer condemned it as nothing less
than an "operational plan for a crime against humanity".
"It
is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in
preparation for deportation outside the strip," Michael Sfard told the
Guardian newspaper.
The UN has also previously warned that the deportation or forcible transfer of
an occupied territory's civilian population is strictly prohibited under
international humanitarian law and "tantamount to ethnic cleansing".
Later
on Monday, during a meeting at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu spoke about US President Donald Trump's proposal that the US take
over post-war Gaza and permanently resettle its population elsewhere.
Netanyahu said, "I think President Trump has a
brilliant vision. It's called free choice. If people want to stay, they can
stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave...
"We're
working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will
seek to realize what they always say - that they wanted to give the
Palestinians a better future."
Trump
said,"We've had great co-operation from... surrounding countries, great
cooperation from every single one of them. So, something good will
happen."
In
March, Arab states backed a US$53 billion Egyptian alternative to Trump's plan
for Gaza's reconstruction that would allow the Palestinians living there to
stay in place. They also stressed their "categorical rejection of any form
of displacement of the Palestinian people", describing such an idea as
"a gross violation of international law, a crime against humanity and
ethnic cleansing".
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas also endorsed the Egyptian
plan, but the US and Israel said it failed to address realities in Gaza.
Palestinians
fear a repeat of the Nakba - the Arabic word for "catastrophe" - when
hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes before and during
the war that followed the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
Many of those refugees ended up in Gaza, where they and
their descendants make up three-quarters of the population. Another 900,000
registered refugees live in the occupied West Bank, while 3.4 million others
live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the UN.
Most of
Gaza's population has also been displaced multiple times. More than 90% of
homes are estimated to be damaged or destroyed; the healthcare, water,
sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed; and there are shortages of food,
fuel, medicine and shelter.
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