Israeli “Humanitarian City” Plan in Gaza – International Law Implications

Dr Brian Brivati, Executive Director, Britain Palestine Project

On 7 July 2025, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered plans for a “humanitarian city” in the Rafah area of southern Gaza. The proposal would initially intern about 600,000 displaced Palestinians (after “security screening” to exclude Hamas affiliates) in a militarily controlled encampment, with the goal of eventually confining all 2 million+ Gaza residents there. Once inside the fenced zone, Palestinians “will not be allowed to leave,” and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would secure the perimeter. Katz explicitly linked this plan to a long-term “emigration” policy – encouraging Palestinians to “voluntarily emigrate” from Gaza to other countries. This drastic population concentration and relocation scheme – ostensibly presented as a humanitarian refuge– raises serious legal red flags under international and domestic law.

The Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) categorically prohibits an occupying power from forcibly transferring or deporting the civilian population, either within or outside occupied territory, except for temporary evacuations justified by imperative civilian safety or military necessity. Removing Gaza’s entire populace to a camp and barring their return violates this core rule. Such mass displacement of protected persons is deemed a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions – i.e. a war crime. International tribunals have affirmed that unlawful deportation or transfer of civilians is a serious breach of IHL, and when conducted on a large scale can also constitute a crime against humanity.

Israeli officials may argue the Rafah “city” is a necessary evacuation to protect Gazan civilians or isolate Hamas combatants (a claim of military necessity) and that emigration would be “voluntary.” Legally, however, these justifications are untenable. IHL only permits temporary relocations of civilians in a conflict for their own safety or imperative military reasons, and even then requires that evacuees be allowed to return home once hostilities cease. Katz’s plan meets none of these conditions: it is an open-ended mass removal as an end in itself, not a short-term safety measure. It forms part of the wider Operation “Gideon’s Chariots,” launched in May: “The plans outlined several goals, including “defeating Hamas,” demobilizing the area, and returning Israeli hostages, a goal relegated to the last place on the list. But another distinct aim was also articulated: “concentrating and moving the population.”

Forcibly corralling millions into a closed camp and preventing them from leaving or returning to their communities would violate these rights. It effectively amounts to arbitrary mass detention without due process. The plan also threatens the right not to be exiled from one’s own territory. Any notion that this could be “voluntary” is dispelled by the coercive conditions in Gaza. The Guardian reported, Israel lawyer Michael Sfard as commenting: “Katz’s scheme breaks international law. It also directly contradicted claims made hours earlier by the office of Israel’s military chief, which said in a letter that Palestinians were only displaced inside Gaza for their own protection. (Katz) laid out an operational plan for a crime against humanity. It is nothing less than that…While the government still calls the deportation ‘voluntary’, people in Gaza are under so many coercive measures that no departure from the strip can be seen in legal terms as consensual. When you drive someone out of their homeland that would be a war crime, in the context of a war. If it’s done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime against humanity,” Sfard added.

Moreover, if the intent is to permanently eliminate Palestinian presence in Gaza – effectively changing the demographic makeup – it could implicate the prohibition on genocide. The Genocide Convention includes causing serious harm or imposing conditions of life calculated to destroy a group “in whole or in part.” Public Law expert Professor Ralph Wilde of UCL told Al Jeerza: “There are “clear rules” of international law which prohibit the forced transfer of Palestinians within Gaza or the occupied West Bank, “not only transfer outside of that territory but also forced transfer within it”.

“We have to start with with the illegality of Israel’s presence in and of itself. Israel has no right even to be in Gaza or in the West Bank, and therefore everything Israel does there, because its presence is illegal, is also illegal, including the way it treats the Palestinian people at the moment and in implementing any of these plans for forced displacement whether within or outside of Gaza…Also, because it’s part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against the Palestinian people, it is also a crime against humanity, again at the level of state responsibility and individual criminal responsibility…Finally, it is also genocide; it is part of the existing ongoing process of intending to inflict on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to destroy them in whole or in part. So essentially a war crime, a crime against humanity and the crime of genocide at both an individual criminal level and at the level of the state.”

Israel’s own legal framework aligns with the above international norms. The IDF Law of War Manual and Israeli Supreme Court jurisprudence require compliance with international humanitarian principles. Under Israeli criminal law, soldiers are obligated to refuse manifestly unlawful orders– orders that patently violate law and morality carry no legal validity. Israel’s 1950 laws (enacted in the shadow of WWII) explicitly define “deportation and other inhumane acts” against civilians as crimes against humanity, and the “deportation of civilian population of or in occupied territory” as a war crime. Katz’s plan to concentrate and remove Gazans would squarely conflict with these provisions, putting any officials or soldiers who implement it at risk of domestic and international criminal liability.

In legal terms, Katz’s “humanitarian city” proposal amounts to an act of forcible population transfer, violating multiple pillars of international law – the Geneva Conventions’ protections for civilians, fundamental human rights, and peremptory norms against mass expulsion. Implementing it would not only invite designation as a grave war crime and crime against humanity, but also expose, according to legal experts like Professor Wilde, Israeli officials and soldiers to prosecution domestically for war crimes and internationally for the crime of genocide. No genuine legal justification – humanitarian or otherwise – can excuse the permanent corralling and removal of an entire civilian population from their land. The plan’s openly stated aim of engineering “voluntary” emigration under duress only underscores its unlawful character. Advisors and decision-makers should be acutely aware that such actions carry profound legal risks and would likely be deemed null and void under international law, while subjecting those involved to personal liability. In summary, the Rafah camp scheme, if carried out, would breach International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law, conflict with Israel’s own legal norms, and trigger robust legal challenges in courts worldwide.