Jerusalem
CNN
–
A planned “humanitarian city” within Gaza, intended to hold hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, will become a “concentration camp,” former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmaat warned.
Israeli Defense Minister Katz said last week he told the military to proceed with plans for the zone. The area was built on the abandoned in Rafa city in southern Gaza, and once the Palestinians enter the zone they are not allowed to leave. Katz also vowed to implement a plan for Palestinian immigration from Gaza.
“This is a concentration camp. I’m sorry,” Olmart told the Guardian on Sunday. “If they (Palestinians) are deported to a new “humanitarian city,” this can be said to be part of the ethnic cleansing. ”
In response to Olmart’s comments, the Prime Minister’s Office called him “a felon convicted of shame on Israel on CNN.” In a statement, the office said: “We’re evacuating civilians. Hamas blocks them. Does he call it a war crime?” Ormart was released from prison in 2017 after serving 16 months on corruption charges.
Olmat has previously condemned the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza and the country’s political leaders. In May, he said he could no longer protect Israel from charges of war crimes. “What if it’s not a war crime?” he asked rhetorically in an interview with CNN. He said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right members of his government are “being committed in any other way that cannot be interpreted.”
More than 58,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The latest comment from Ormert, who served as Israel’s prime minister from 2006 to 2009, goes further ahead to criticizing the country’s intentions in Gaza, particularly as comparisons to Israel’s Nazi concentration camps are considered virtually unconceivable. But Olmart said it was an “inevitable interpretation” of the plan.
“When they build camps that “clean” more than half of Gaza, the inevitable understanding of this strategy is not to save the Palestinians.
Katz’s plan for what he called a “humanitarian city” was discussed in a meeting with Netanyahu on Sunday evening, according to sources familiar with the issue. But after Israeli press reported that it would take months to build the zone and billions of dollars, sources said Netanyahu had called for the facility to be shorter and cheaper.
Yair Lapid, Israel’s head of opposition, has accused the plan of Netanyahu’s far-right government partners of “running in extreme fantasies just to maintain his coalition.” In a statement on social media, Rapid was called “end the war and take hostages back.”
Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sphard told CNN last week that Katz’s plan would amount to forced demobilization in preparation for deportation. Both of these are war crimes, Sphard said.
“If they were committed across a large community, they could become a crime against humanity,” Sphard added, dismissing the notion that deviations from Gaza could be considered voluntary.
