Human Rights Organizations: Israeli plan to concentrate Palestinians in Gaza on the ruins of Rafah constitutes a clear intent to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity
On 15 July 2025, Adalah sent a letter in its own name and on behalf of Gisha, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel to the Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, the Attorney General, Gali Baharav-Miara and the Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi demanding the immediate cancellation of the plan announced by Minister Katz to concentrate Gaza’s population in a camp on the ruins of Rafah. The plan constitutes a clear and declared intention to blatantly violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes and crimes against humanity
In a briefing to journalists on 7 July 2025, Minister Katz declared that he ordered the Israeli army to prepare a plan to establish a so-called “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah, with the aim of concentrating the residents of Gaza there. According to his statement, in the first phase, approximately 600,000 Palestinians, primarily living in the Al-Mawasi area now, will be relocated to the camp, and then the rest of Gaza’s residents will follow. The concentration area will be sealed off and secured by the Israeli army. Entry for Palestinians will be admitted there only after inspection, those inside will not be allowed to leave, and mechanisms to encourage and promote “voluntary emigration” will be used. Minister Katz further stated that most of the humanitarian aid would be directed exclusively to the camp, signalling an intent to use starvation as a method to force people to move there.
Adalah’s Legal Director, Dr. Suhad Bishara, who submitted the letter on behalf of the human rights organizations, argued that in practice, this is a plan for mass forced transfer and collective punishment. This plan envisions a camp under total Israeli military control, denying Palestinians the right to movement, access to their homes and property, and other essential services. Regardless of whether or not this plan is followed by mass expulsion from Gaza, the intent to commit crimes under international law remains clear.
The human rights organizations noted that the plan to concentrate the Palestinians in Gaza takes on added significance given the dire and inhumane conditions in which all residents of the Gaza Strip currently live, as a result of Israel’s conduct of war. These conditions include, but are not limited to, starvation, widespread demolition of residential and civilian buildings, the destruction and collapse of the healthcare system, the destruction of local food production systems, the transformation of the entire area of the Gaza Strip into a danger zone and the conduct of a war of extermination against the population as a whole.
As outlined by the Defense Minister, the plan, if implemented, amounts to the forced transfer of protected persons, which is explicitly prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention; the prohibition on starvation as a method of warfare; collective punishment, which is also forbidden under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Hague Regulations; and ethnic cleansing, as defined by UN experts as “the use of force or intimidation to remove a civilian population from a geographical area.”
Furthermore, the human rights organizations emphasized that this plan, if implemented, may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the forcible transfer of civilians, as part of a widespread or systematic attack. The intended plan may also amount to persecution, “the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law by reason of the identity of the group or collectivity” under Article 7 of the Rome Statute. Further, international criminal tribunals have consistently ruled that the lack of genuine choice, even in the absence of physical force, constitutes coercion and meets the legal threshold for forcible transfer. Starvation, psychological pressure, and fear all qualify as coercive conditions. Finally, the transfer plan could amount to genocide under Article II of the Genocide Convention, which includes: “Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.”
Given the gravity of the violations outlined, the human rights organizations demand the immediate cancellation of the plan and a commitment from Israeli authorities to cease any such implementation.
Related:
Press Release, Israel’s “voluntary emigration” policy from the Gaza Strip constitutes the forced transfer of the civilian population – a war crime and crime against humanity, 12 June 2025
Photo by Ali Hassan/Flash90
