Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has floated a trial balloon that had no business being launched in the first place.
Katz told journalists recently that he is promoting a plan to squeeze the 2.2.million Palestinian Arab inhabitants of the Gaza Strip into a “humanitarian city” that will be built on the ruins of Rafah. A city next to the Egyptian border, it was virtually destroyed during combat between the Israeli army and Hamas in the still ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
The proposed encampment is more of a vision than an actual plan because the Israeli government has yet to embrace it on an official basis. One assumes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose Katz to announce it so as to test its moral and political acceptability.
The consensus so far does not look promising, with critics having compared it to a ghetto and a concentration camp.
The “city” would initially hold 600,000 people, all of whom would some from the Mawasi coastal area. In the fullness of time, the remaining inhabitants of Gaza would be moved there, giving Israel full control of about 70 percent of Gaza.
It is unclear whether this would be the start of a permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza, which Israel invaded in 2023 following Hamas’ attack in the western Negev on October 7.
In all probability, the proposal presented by Katz is connected with the Israeli government’s far-fetched scheme to encourage “voluntary” emigration from Gaza, an idea raised by U.S. President Donald Trump this past February.
Trump, an erratic and unpredictable person, spoke about it within the context of creating a Riviera-style beach resort in Gaza. Since then, he appears to have lost interest in it, but Israel is still committed to Trump’s unrealistic plan, hoping to resolve its problem in Gaza by means of resettlement and emigration.
Like Trump’s plan, Katz’s proposal appears to be dead in the water.
General Eyal Zamir, the chief of staff of the Israeli armed forces, has labelled it as “unworkable,” saying it is riddled with “countless problems” and has “more holes in it than cheese.” He believes it would interfere with the on-again, off-again negotiations to free the rest of the hostages held by Hamas.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has cast doubt on it as well, having denounced it as “a crazy idea, even by this government’s standards.”
Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, has likened it to a concentration camp. And he has warned that forcing Palestinians into this “city” would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing because they would be barred from returning to their homes in northern, central and southern Gaza.
Still others in Israel contend that the proposal, if carried out, would constitute forcible transfer, a crime under international law.
In short, the proposal is morally and politically untenable and would only exacerbate Israel’s problems in Gaza. After almost two years of war, Israel still has not fully accomplished its primary objectives there. Israel has neither completely crushed Hamas, which is a resilient enemy, nor has it freed all the hostages.
Instead of focusing on a dubious proposal calling for the resettlement of Palestinians in a small corner of Gaza, Israel should seriously start thinking about a “day-after” scenario, which Netanyahu has stubbornly refused to consider.
This plan might well render Hamas irrelevant. It might also enable moderate Palestinians to govern this coastal enclave in cooperation with Arab partners such as the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Egypt and with the financial assistance of the United States and the European Union.
The new Palestinian administrators of Gaza could be drawn from a revamped and reformed Palestinian Authority. They should be given a suitable opportunity to convert Gaza into an economically viable and politically stable statelet that would no longer pose a security threat to Israel.
Ideally, this is a process that would stabilize and demilitarize Gaza. Over a longer period, it could improve Israel’s image, culminate in a two-state solution, and lead to Israel’s greater integration into the region in the form of a historic rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.