Reports of a shocking Israeli Gaza “solution” that aims to ethnically cleanse Gaza of all Palestinians by establishing so-called Humanitarian Transit Areas or concentration camps has surfaced in Israeli and other media.

The plan details the creation of mass enclosed camps that Palestinians will be enticed to enter but unable to leave unless they depart “voluntarily” and are “transported” out of Gaza.

I use the terms “concentration camps”, “solution” and “transported” deliberately. Although from the Nazi Holocaust playbook, what’s potentially going to occur under our watch in Gaza resembles the way Jews in the 1930s and 1940s were enclosed in ghettos and transition camps all over Europe prior to their ultimate transportation to the German death camps – except that now, the mass killing has preceded the transportation plan and the descendants of Holocaust victims have become the perpetrators.

The plan that’s being progressed by the Israeli Government, through its Defence Minister Israel Katz, is a horrific attempt to disappear millions of Palestinians from Gaza. The industrial scale murder of some 100,000 Gazans has been slowed as the world’s revulsion has made Israel’s brand even too toxic for, it seems, the US to stomach. And so we’re seeing plans for the next and final stage of Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing, clothed in euphemisms and portrayed as a humanitarian project.

Israel’s plan to create Humanitarian Transit Areas in southern Gaza on the ruins of the city of Rafah was shared with the Trump administration in February and subsequently discussed in the White House. It was publicised recently by Katz who stated that he had instructed the Israel Defence Force and the Defence ministry to prepare to establish what he disgustingly called a new “humanitarian city” to initially accommodate some 600,000 displaced Palestinians who have been living in tents on the Mawasi area on the Gaza coast. This US$2 billion plan was ostensibly created by the discredited and highly suspect Israel/US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which now denies any involvement in it.

The Guardian and Israeli news outlets Haaretz and the Times of Israel reported details of this plan on 7 and 8 July, with these transit areas or concentration camps described as “voluntary” places where the Gazan population could “temporarily reside, deradicalise, re-integrate, and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so". However, Katz emphasised that those entering these camps would be unable to leave unless they were voluntarily “emigrating”. And he stated that Netanyahu and Trump had discussed emigration options for Gazans in Washington in early July.

The Washington Post ran this story back in May and followed up with an update this week. Reuters journalists claim the detailed slide projection of the plan they were shown by an insider shows some eight camps, each capable of holding hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with arrows pointing to Egypt and Cyprus and other external points labelled as “Additional Destination?” which presumably indicates where Israel thinks it can forcibly transfer an entire population.

The IDF has denied that this plan is operational. However, according to The Washington Post, the plan is being co-ordinated by Amir Baram, the Defense Ministry’s director-general who is the former deputy chief of staff of the IDF.

Despite Netanyahu’s and Trump’s silence about this specific war crime and amidst the empty rhetoric around the next ceasefire, it appears that these transit camps would be constructed during a forthcoming ceasefire. One imagines that unless the Israeli siege of Gaza is immediately broken and adequate food and aid is delivered to more than two million people, starving and injured Palestinians will be lured into these camps as they have been lured to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s food centres only to be randomly killed and maimed. In the last few weeks, more than 700 Palestinians have been killed trying to get food at these centres. And the reverse is also true in this horror scenario: those choosing to stay in tents or their bombed-out homes or those refused entry to these camps due to their links to Hamas, will face continued Israeli bombs as the rest of Gaza is flattened to realise the Trumpian and Israeli visions of a future Gaza.

Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA commented recently saying: “A second Nakba? Israeli officials state they plan yet another mass displacement of the Palestinian people in #Gaza towards Rafah. This would de-facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt for the Palestinians, displaced over and over across generations. This would also deprive Palestinians of any prospects for a better future in their homeland. We cannot be silent and complicit of such large scale forced displacement_.”_

Israeli politicians have never hidden their agenda to completely annex Gaza and the West Bank. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has repeatedly stated that Israel will never leave Gaza or the West Bank and Netanyahu stated in May this year that the IDF will be in Gaza “indefinitely”.

The world’s apathy and indifference to Israel’s ongoing genocide makes it hard to imagine that the impending mass forced expulsion and ethnic cleaning of those Palestinians that have survived the unspeakable hell of this last 21 months will trigger a concerted effort to stop Israel.

But we must stop Israel. We must redouble our efforts and take every action possible to pressure the Albanese Government to take a stand at this late stage. We must uphold international law and support UN bodies such as the International Criminal Court and act as directed.

We must immediately sanction Israel and end all military and intelligence trade and co-operation. We must boycott all complicit companies and entities, and we must work to get our pension funds, the Future Fund, banks and other corporations to divest from all complicit Israeli and other companies.

We cannot allow ourselves to be silent witnesses to Israel’s genocide and ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity. We must stop Israel.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.