This is not a negotiating tactic to strengthen Israel’s position in ceasefire talks, writes Medea Benjamin. It is the next phase of a nearly two-year long genocide.
An aerial view on Jan. 21 showing destruction in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, after Israeli forces withdrawal and a brief ceasefire took hold. (UNRWA/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)
The Israeli government has just put forward one of the most brazenly genocidal schemes in modern memory — and unless we act immediately, the world will once again let it happen.
As reported in Haaretz, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz is proposing to force some 600,000 Palestinians — and eventually the entire population of Gaza — into a fenced-in “humanitarian city” to be built on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza.
The plan is to “screen” the population, separate out alleged Hamas members, and then pressure the remaining civilians — men, women, and children — to “voluntarily” leave Gaza for another country. Which country? That hasn’t even been determined.
The point isn’t relocation — it’s erasure. This reflects a long-standing goal among many Israelis, especially on the right, to take full control of Gaza and clear it of Palestinians.
The U.N. has 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.”
While all eyes are focused on a possible ceasefire, Katz is not interested in peace — he’s interested in a “final solution.” A speeding up of the second Nakba we have been witnessing for the past 20 months. In fact, he has stated that construction would begin during a 60-day ceasefire. So what’s the point of a ceasefire, if it’s used to build a concentration camp?
Once Palestinians are herded into this camp, they will not be allowed to leave for other parts of Gaza. They won’t be allowed to return to what’s left of their homes, their neighborhoods, their farms, their schools. They will be trapped inside this militarized zone, under constant surveillance, held at gunpoint until Israel can arrange their deportation.
Just think of the tragic, unbearable irony: the Israeli government — founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust — is now building a massive concentration camp for an entire population.
If that sounds unthinkable, look at what Israel has already gotten away with.
Slaughtering for 20 Months
The IDF’s Merkava battle tank during Israel’s invasion of Gaza, December 2023. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 3.0)
For the past 20 months, the world has watched — and largely enabled— a genocidal campaign in Gaza. Over 55,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered, the majority of them women and children.
[A report published by the medical journal Lancet a year ago projected the death toll could reach more than 186,000 people. American consumer-advocate Ralph Nader says the dead in Gaza are being vastly under-counted and in February said the actual number is 400,000 and growing.]
Israel has bombed hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and mosques. It has flattened entire neighborhoods with AI-generated kill lists. It has assassinated journalists, targeted ambulances, destroyed bakeries and water systems.
It has used hunger as a weapon of war, deliberately blocking aid trucks, attacking convoys, and starving the population into desperation. And in a cruel twist, it has created the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — a scheme to funnel aid through Israeli-controlled routes and sideline the U.N. and experienced NGOs.
Its “distribution points” are really death traps, where desperate people have been shot day after day as they risk their lives to get a bit of food.
This engineered starvation is not an accident. It is a strategy — a form of collective punishment on a scale rarely seen in modern times.
We have already failed the people of Gaza — again and again. We failed when we looked the other way as children were buried in rubble. We failed when we allowed U.S. tax dollars to fund the very bombs that wiped out refugee camps. We failed when we kept pretending there was still a line Israel wouldn’t cross.
Mass Internment & Expulsion
Katz, left, as Israel’s newly appointed defense minister in November 2024 with his predecessor Yoav Galant. (Spokesperson and Public Relations Division of the Ministry of Defense of Israel, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Now Katz is telling us — explicitly—what comes next: mass internment and forced expulsion. And unless we rise up with every ounce of outrage we have, we will fail again.
Let’s be absolutely clear: the infrastructure for this plan is already being built. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump are lobbying corrupt governments in the Global South to accept the deported.
This is not a negotiating tactic to strengthen Israel’s position in ceasefire talks — it is the next phase of a genocide we’ve been watching in real time for nearly two years.
And what is the U.S. government doing? Still issuing meaningless statements about “Israel’s right to defend itself.” Still shipping weapons. Still blocking accountability at the United Nations — and even sanctioning officials such as U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for daring to speak out.
Trump could stop this today — by cutting off military aid, backing the International Criminal Court’s investigations and declaring that forced displacement of Palestinians will not be tolerated. But instead, he’s still dreaming of turning Gaza into a Middle Eastern resort for the ultra-rich.
Meanwhile, more Arab governments stand ready to normalize ties with Israel, making deals with war criminals while their fellow Arabs are starved, bombed and now threatened with mass exile. Where is the outcry from Cairo, Riyadh, Amman? Is there absolutely no red line?
One bright spot on the international scene is the Hague Group, which is convening an emergency meeting in Colombia on July 15–16. This growing bloc of nations has joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. These countries are taking a courageous stand to uphold international law and defend Palestinian life. Every nation that claims to value justice must join them — immediately.
And here in the United States, every member of Congress must be pushed — loudly, relentlessly — to take a public stand. No more vague language. No more hiding behind mealy-mouthed scripts. We demand immediate, public opposition to this “humanitarian city” plan — and a full cutoff of military support to Israel. This is a moment of moral reckoning. Choose a side.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking this can’t happen. It is happening. The groundwork is being laid. The walls are going up. The deportation flights are being negotiated.
There is no neutral ground. This is not a policy debate. This is genocide — on camera, with diplomatic cover, and with our tax dollars.
Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace and the author of numerous books including Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection and Inside Iran: the Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This article is from Z Network.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Medea Benjamin is a Jewish voice for both peace and
truth, while Zionist US-Israel lies to hide its genocidal evil.
That evil being the “unbearable irony” of a people
having suffered horribly under Nazi rule during WWII, to
follow a Zionist intoxicated power elite convincing
that people to “worship the beast”(Rev.13.4).
Real Jews as authentic Christians worship a God of love
which commands love of the neighbor, all human being.
“Just think of the tragic, unbearable irony: the Israeli government — founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust — is now building a massive concentration camp for an entire population.”
Uh, they already did that back in 2006. They’re just liquidating it now.
But within Gaza a new concentration camp is being prepared in Rafah as explained in Medea Benjamin’s piece published today.
Yes, Medea, I agree about what’s happening. What to do about it is something I don’t know. Most of Congress and the Senate are bought-off. The office of my congressional “representative” Suhas Subramanyam is infected with Zionism (so was that of his predecessor Jennifer Wexton). So is that of Senator Mark Warner. Staffers at Subramanyam’s office have outright refused to pass on my preference of pro-justice bills. Staffers at Warner’s office have mocked my effort to push back against atrocity propaganda being pushed by Zionists. Zionists get staffing jobs in order to ensure that Zionism doesn’t get thwarted.
It is really too late to “begin”, don’t you think? And any planning that accepts the “two-party” system is never going to overthrow capitalism. This should have been stopped many years ago, but continuity of agenda is the only thing the capitalist parties understand.
Thank you, Medea, for all your valuable hard work and unflinching truth.
If there is one thing that the Gaza genocide, perpetrated by Israel, shows us is that the Corporate-Owned-News (CON) is not a source of unbiased information. Exactly the opposite, the CON is a pure con-job on Americans. The CON is substantially directed at our corrupt Congress, making sure they have the latest talking points to keep the fake narrative going in public. As long as many Americans continue to turn to the CON for their “news”, things will not change because the public, and Congress, will support the bad policies.
Members of Netanyahu’s faction have been talking about this for decades. IIRC, the Orwellian term they used to use was “transfer.” They would simply “transfer” all the Arab sub-humans out of the land they claimed. Along the way, Netanyahu has “mowed the grass” in Gaza killing thousands every few years or so. The General who is now the leader of the Israeli “opposition” whom Biden and the Dems wanted to be made PM, Gen. Gantz was in charge of the operation under Obama that killed some 5000 or so and blew up tall residential buildings as a test to see if the world would object to such a sight on their screens.
This is not a recent thing. This did not begin on Oct. 7th. In some ways, Nakba 2.0 began after Nakba 1.0. Was there ever a real intention to stop at that point? The sad fact about humans is that people who successfully commit ethnic cleansing and genocide usually are happy with the results, and are willing to do it again as it proved useful the last time.
And of course, the constant call of the American Left … we must “push” the Democrats. The same Democrats who constantly said from the White House that Israel had no red lines while Biden was in power. The same Democrats who have constantly supported Israel. The same Democrats who lied to the Palestinians 30 years ago and sold them that crooked Oslo deal. Yeah, trying to push the Democrats has worked so very well. That is the course that the American Left has been taking for decades that has led to this very genocide.
Try throwing out this Congress. Try locking them up. Put, please stop with this “pushing” bit. At the very least we should be organizing strong, George Galloway, anti-genocide primary and general election campaigns in almost every district. Don’t Push. Don’t just get Mad. Get Mad and Organize. Do not be afraid to take on Genocidal Democrats along with the Genocidal Republicans. That should be the Action Point at the end of such a piece. We need to TAKE the Congress. Forget about pushing it as we don’t have the money to move the Best Congress Money Can Buy. We need a whole new Congress.
Now is the time in the election cycle to be organizing people powered campaigns for the midterms. People-powered campaigns take longer to organize than the “drop-in-$10million” campaigns. Now is the time to begin. Organize now. Organize with people around you, then pick your candidates from among yourselves. Do not follow the candidates that the Oligarchs put onto TV as that is still following an oligarch-approved candidate. Organize now, as the primaries are within one year.