The killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces in Gaza amounts to ethnic cleansing and war crime, a former prime minister of the Jewish state has said in a recent interview.

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert said in the interview with The Guardian newspaper that if Palestinians are “deported into a new ‘humanitarian city’ (in southern Gaza Strip), then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing”.

Olmert served as Israel’s prime minister from 2006 to 2009.

The proposed city intended to hold hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would be a “concentration camp”, Olmert warned.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said last week he had told the military to advance plans for the zone, which would be meant to eventually contain the “entire population” of Gaza. The area would be built on the ruins of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, and once Palestinians enter the zone, they would not be allowed to leave.

The minister vowed to implement a plan for the migration of Palestinians from Gaza.

“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,” Olmert told The Guardian. “If they (Palestinians) will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing.”

He has repeatedly condemned the behaviour of the Israeli military in Gaza and the country’s political leadership. In May, he said he could no more defend Israel against charges of war crimes. “What is it if not a war crime?” he asked rhetorically in an interview with CNN.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right members of his government are “committing actions which can’t be interpreted any other way”, Ehud Olmert added.

His latest comments go beyond questioning Tel Aviv’s intentions in Gaza, particularly since comparisons to Nazi concentration camps is virtually unimaginable in Israel. Olmert said it was an “inevitable interpretation” of the plans.

“People make their way past the rubble of houses in Rafah in Jan 2025, a day after a now-defunct ceasefire deal in the conflict came into force.

“When they build a camp where they (plan to) ‘clean’ more than half of Gaza, then the inevitable understanding of the strategy is that it is not to save (Palestinians). It is to deport them, to push them and to throw them away,” Olmert told the Guardian.

Israeli cabinet discusses proposal

The Israeli defence minister’s proposal for the “humanitarian city” were debated at a meeting with Netanyahu on Sunday.

Yair Lapid, the head of Israel’s opposition, blasted the plans as an attempt by Netanyahu to let his far-right government partners “run wild with extreme fantasies just to preserve his coalition”.

Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, said last week that Katz’s plan would entail the forcible transfer of a population in preparation for deportation. Both of these are war crimes, he observed.

“If they are done on a massive scale — whole communities — they can amount to crimes against humanity,” Sfard added.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2025