Warning over Israeli 'ethnic cleansing' plan for Gaza

Israeli ex-PM Olmert says 'humanitarian city' for Palestinians would be concentration camp

- Emma Graham-Harrison

The "humanitarian city" that Israel's defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing, Israel's former prime minister Ehud Olmert has told the Guardian.

Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Olmert said, and construction of the camp would mark an escalation.

"It is a concentration camp. I am sorry," he said, when asked about the plans laid out by Israel Katz last week. Once inside, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave, except to go to other countries, Katz said.

Katz has ordered the military to start drawing up operational plans for construction of the "humanitarian city" on the ruins of southern Gaza, initially to house 600,000 people and eventually the entire Palestinian population.

"If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new 'humanitarian city', then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing. It hasn't yet happened," Olmert said. That would be "the inevitable interpretation" of any attempt to create a camp for hundreds of thousands of people.

Olmert does not consider Israel's current campaign is ethnic cleansing because, he said, evacuating civilians to protect them from fighting was legal under international law, and Palestinians had returned to areas where military operations had finished.

The "humanitarian city" project is backed by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel's refusal to withdraw from the area Katz envisages for the camp is a sticking point in faltering negotiations for a cease-fire deal, Israeli media have reported.

Olmert said that after months of violent rhetoric, including calls from ministers to "cleanse" Gaza and projects to build Israeli settlements there, government claims that the "humanitarian city" aimed to protect Palestinians were not credible.