Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has condemned plans by Israel’s current leadership to build a so-called “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza, likening it to a concentration camp and warning it could constitute ethnic cleansing if carried out.
Speaking to The Guardian, Olmert said Israel was already committing war crimes in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and that the proposed resettlement camp marked a dangerous escalation.
“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,” Olmert said bluntly, referring to Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz’s proposed camp that would house initially 600,000 Palestinians and eventually the entire population of Gaza. Katz has ordered military planners to begin preparations for the project, which would confine Palestinians to the site and allow them to leave only for other countries.
“If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing,” Olmert said. “It hasn’t yet happened, but that would be the inevitable interpretation.”
The controversial plan has received backing from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel’s refusal to withdraw from the Rafah area earmarked for the camp has become a key obstacle in ceasefire negotiations, according to Israeli media reports.
Olmert, who served as prime minister from 2006 to 2009, said that after months of inflammatory rhetoric, including calls from senior ministers to “cleanse” Gaza, the claim that the camp was intended to protect civilians lacked credibility.
“When they build a camp where they [plan to] ‘clean’ more than half of Gaza, then the inevitable understanding of the strategy of this [is that] it is not to save [Palestinians]. It is to deport them, to push them and to throw them away,” he said. “There is no other understanding that I have, at least.”
Israeli human rights lawyers and scholars have echoed these warnings, describing the plan as a potential crime against humanity. Some have even cautioned that under specific conditions, the project could amount to genocide.
Comparisons to Nazi Germany have drawn harsh backlash within Israel. Yad Vashem, the country’s Holocaust memorial centre, condemned one journalist for making what it called a “serious and inappropriate distortion of the meaning of the Holocaust.”
Olmert’s remarks came as funerals were held in the occupied West Bank for two Palestinian men, one of whom was an American citizen, killed by Israeli settlers. The killings follow a long-standing campaign of settler violence that has forcibly displaced several Palestinian communities over the past two years.
Describing the attacks as war crimes, Olmert said, “[It is] unforgivable. Unacceptable. There are continuous operations organised, orchestrated in the most brutal, criminal manner by a large group.”
He rejected the government’s description of the attackers as mere “hilltop youth,” saying the phrase glossed over the reality of systematic violence. “I prefer the term ‘hilltop atrocities’,” he said.
“There is no way that they can operate in such a consistent, massive and widespread manner without a framework of support and protection which is provided by the [Israeli] authorities in the [occupied Palestinian] territories.”
According to Olmert, the suffering in Gaza and ongoing settler violence in the West Bank have fuelled mounting anger against Israel worldwide, anger that cannot simply be dismissed as antisemitism.
“In the United States there is more and more and more expanding expressions of hatred to Israel,” he said. “We make a discount to ourselves saying: ‘They are antisemites.’ I don’t think that they are only antisemites. I think many of them are anti-Israel because of what they watch on television, what they watch on social networks.
“This is a painful but normal reaction of people who say: ‘Hey, you guys have crossed every possible line.’”
Olmert believes attitudes inside Israel may only begin to shift under the weight of growing international pressure. He criticised the Israeli media for its inadequate reporting on violence against Palestinians and urged the international community to take a more active role, especially in the absence of a viable political opposition at home.
Despite the devastation in Gaza, Olmert, a key figure in Israel’s last serious push for a two-state solution, remains hopeful that peace is still attainable. He is currently collaborating with former Palestinian foreign minister Nasser al-Kidwa to revive international momentum towards a negotiated settlement.
He even expressed belief that a historic agreement, involving an end to the war in Gaza in exchange for normalised relations with Saudi Arabia, could still be within reach, if only Netanyahu were willing or able to pursue it.
Instead, Olmert was left stunned by the sight of Netanyahu, under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, nominating US President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize.
