Olmert: Israeli “Humanitarian City” in Gaza is a Concentration Camp - Germany: unacceptable

Former Israeli PM warns of ethnic cleansing as critics condemn forced relocation plan. In one of the most searing critiques from within Israel’s political establishment, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has described the Israeli government’s plan to relocate Gaza’s population to a so-called “humanitarian city” as tantamount to the creation of a concentration camp.

“It’s a concentration camp, I’m sorry,” Olmert said bluntly about the tent city proposed by Defense Minister Yisrael Katz to house Palestinians displaced from across Gaza. “If they are deported to that ‘humanitarian city,’ then you could say it’s part of ethnic cleansing. It hasn’t happened yet. But it cannot be understood any other way.”

Olmert warned that the proposal—revealed earlier this week—signals a potential mass forced transfer of civilians and a deliberate effort to empty Gaza of its Palestinian population.

A Plan Under Fire

According to Katz, the Israeli military has been instructed to prepare for the transfer of all Palestinians in Gaza—starting with the 600,000 residents currently sheltering in the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone—into a tent city built atop the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza. The plan reportedly bars exit from the city except through emigration to other countries.

Critics across the political spectrum say the initiative amounts to a permanent displacement strategy under the guise of humanitarian aid, potentially violating international humanitarian law.

“When you build a camp to 'cleanse' more than half of Gaza,” Olmert continued, “then the obvious understanding is that it is to expel them, push them out and throw them away. That is what this looks like.”

Olmert’s use of the term “concentration camp” carries deep historical weight in both Israeli and global discourse, evoking imagery of mass internment, confinement without due process, and systemic abuse.

Palestinian and International Outrage

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry also condemned the plan, accusing Israel of planning a forced displacement under inhumane conditions.

“This forced relocation has nothing to do with humanitarian values,” the ministry said in a statement. “It is an attempt to confine hundreds of thousands of civilians in conditions that amount to a war crime—one in which the United States is complicit.”

The international backlash intensified after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz described the situation in Gaza as “completely unacceptable” and revealed that he had privately criticized the Israeli government’s conduct in conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Merz’s remarks focused on the same relocation plan, which he implied violates basic human rights:

“The Palestinians have the right to have a place where they can live,” he said. “We Europeans, together with the Americans, must push for a real solution—one that includes the right to a dignified existence.”

“Sinister Echoes of the Past”

International legal experts and human rights organizations are now calling for urgent scrutiny of the Rafah plan. Several have drawn comparisons to historical instances of mass internment, warning that creating a militarily-controlled, closed camp for a civilian population may violate the Geneva Conventions.

With pressure mounting both abroad and at home, observers say the Israeli government now faces a stark choice: abandon the plan or risk escalating diplomatic isolation and potential legal consequences.