concentration

Israel is ploughing ahead with a plan to build what critics have described as a “concentration camp” for Palestinians on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza, in the face of a growing backlash at home and abroad.

The suggestion, first mooted by Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz earlier this month, anticipates an area that could accommodate an initial group of some 600,000 already displaced Palestinians in Gaza, which would then be expanded to accommodate all of the enclave’s pre-war population of some 2.2 million people. It would be run by international forces and have no Hamas presence.

Once inside Katz’s self-styled “humanitarian city”, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave to other areas in Gaza, but would instead be encouraged to “voluntarily emigrate” to other unspecified countries, the minister said.

Katz’s plan has already received significant criticism. Labelled a “concentration camp” by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and illegal by Israeli lawyers, it has even been criticised by the military that will be responsible for implementing it, with the military’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, reportedly calling it “unworkable” with “more holes in it than cheese”.

Internationally, a British minister said he was “appalled” by the plan, while Austria and Germany’s foreign ministers expressed their “concern”. The United Nations said it was “firmly against” the idea.

But members of the Israeli government have defended the idea, and leaks continue to emerge in the Israeli media over the debate surrounding it within the government – with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly asking only for a plan that was speedier and less costly than a plan presented by the Israeli army.

An Al Jazeera investigation has found that Israel has recently increased the number of demolitions it is conducting in Rafah, possibly paving the way for the “humanitarian city”.

Long planned

Depopulating Gaza has long been an ambition of some of Israel’s more hardline settler groups, who believe themselves to have a divine mandate to occupy the Palestinian territory. The Israeli far-right was encouraged to press ahead with the idea when United States President Donald Trump suggested in February that Palestinians in Gaza could be displaced and moved elsewhere.

Since then, both Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have backed calls for displacement.

When Netanyahu announced in May the creation of the controversial US-backed GHF, a body intended to deliver limited aid into the enclave his forces had been besieging since early March, Netanyahu referred to a future “sterile zone” that Gaza’s population would be moved into, where they would be allowed aid and food.

Later the same month, Smotrich, who has criticised the current plan as too costly but is not opposed to the idea in principle, also suggested that plans were under way to push Gaza’s population into a camp.

Addressing a “settlement conference” in the occupied West Bank, Smotrich told his audience that what remained of Gaza would be “totally destroyed” and its population pressed into a “humanitarian zone” close to the Egyptian border, foreshadowing the language used by Katz.

Part of the Israeli plan

Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flashenberg told Al Jazeera that – for the Israeli government – there was merit to the plan, both from a security perspective, and “from the perspective of ethnically cleansing” Gaza, and providing an end goal that Israel’s leaders could define as a success.

“As I understand it, parts of the military regard removing civilians from the [non-Israeli controlled parts] of Gaza and concentrating them in a single space as an ideal first step in locating and eliminating Hamas,” Flashenberg said of the Palestinian group that Israel has failed to eliminate in 21 months of conflict, despite the killing of more than 58,000 people.

Flashenberg added that the plan would effectively create an “ethnic cleansing terminal”, from which, once people were separated from their original homes, “it makes it easier to move them elsewhere”.

“Of course it complicates ceasefire negotiations, but so what?” Flashenberg said, referring to the ongoing talks aimed at bringing about an initial 60-day ceasefire. “Nothing has really changed. It’s possible, of course, that with work on the concentration camp under way, Hamas might still accept the ceasefire and hope that things might change.”

“It’s part of their entire mentality,” Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of the Israeli parliament representing the Hadash-Ta’al party, said. “They really do believe that they can do anything: that they can move all of these people around as if they’re not even humans. Even if imprisoning just the first 600,000 people suggested by Katz is inconceivable. How can you do that without it leading to some kind of massacre?”

“That they’re even talking about criminal acts without every state in the world condemning them is dangerous,” she added.

But lawyers in Israel have questioned the legality of the move. Military lawyers are reported to have “raised concerns” that Israel might face accusations of forced displacement, and an open letter from a number of Israeli legal scholars is more explicit, slamming the proposal as “manifestly illegal”.

‘Nothing humanitarian’

According to the United Nations, at least 1.9 million people, about 90 percent of Gaza’s pre-war population, have been displaced as a result of Israeli attacks. Many have been displaced multiple times.

Earlier this month, Amnesty concluded that, despite the militarised delivery of limited aid into the strip, Israel is continuing to use starvation as a weapon of war. According to the rights agency, the malnutrition and starvation of children and families across Gaza remain widespread, with the healthcare system that might typically care for them pushed to breaking point by Israel.

“Humanitarian city? I despise all these euphemisms. There’s nothing humanitarian about this. It’s utterly inhumane,” Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, said. “There would be nothing humanitarian about the conditions that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would be pushed into or about the idea you can only leave by going to another country.”

“This has to be condemned and there has to be consequences,” he continued.  “It’s not true when people say there’s no international community any more. If you trade with Israel, cooperate militarily or diplomatically with it, you have leverage. The US has leverage, the EU [European Union] has leverage. All these actors do.”

“By shrugging your shoulders and saying it’s just anarchy,” he concluded, “you’re handing the keys to Smotrich, Katz and Netanyahu and saying there’s nothing you can do.”

Displaced Palestinians and several Israeli politicians alike slam the Israeli government’s plans for what it calls a “humanitarian city” in Rafah. Critics say forcing Palestinians into the zone would amount to a “concentration camp.”

The first detainees have started arriving at Alligator Alcatraz, Florida’s immigrant detention center in the Everglades. The facility went up on a former airstrip in eight days and will have an initial capacity of 3,000 detainees. Florida’s Republican state Atty. Gen. James Uthmeier, the driving force behind the project, posted on X recently that the center “will be checking in hundreds of criminal illegal aliens tonight. Next stop: back to where they came from.”

Alligator Alcatraz — the camp’s official name — raises logistical, legal and humanitarian concerns. It appears intentionally designed to inflict suffering on detainees, and to allow Florida politicians to exploit migrant pain for political gain. Some of the first people held there have already reported inhumane conditions.

“Alligator Alcatraz” is a misnomer. Alcatraz was home to dangerous criminals, including Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly. These were violent offenders who had been tried and convicted and sent to the forbidding island fortress.

In contrast, we don’t know whether detainees sent to Alligator Alcatraz will have had their day in court. We don’t know whether they will receive due process in immigration courts or be charged with a crime. We do know that the majority of people whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement is arresting have no criminal records. Remember, simply being in the U.S. without authorization is not a crime — it is a civil infraction. And the ranks of the undocumented include many people who once had lawful status, such as people who overstayed their visas and people with temporary protected status and other forms of humanitarian relief that the current administration has rescinded. Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research center, reports that 71% of immigrant detainees have no criminal record.

In Florida, ICE has arrested an evangelical pastor, a mother of a newborn and a U.S. citizen. These are the kinds of people who might end up spending time in Alligator Alcatraz. In fact, Florida state documents show that detainees there could include women, children and the elderly.

Alligator Alcatraz will place detainees in life-threatening conditions. The site consists of heavy-duty tents and mobile units, in a location known for intense humidity and sweltering heat. Tropical storms, hurricanes and floods pass through the area regularly. On a day when the president visited, there was light rain and parts of the facility flooded. This is not a safe place for the support staff who will be working there, nor is it for detainees.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has praised the “natural” security at Alligator Alcatraz as “amazing.” When asked if the idea was for detainees to get eaten by alligators if they try to escape, President Trump replied, “I guess that’s the concept.” However, escapes from immigration detention are rare. The June escape by four men from a New Jersey detention center made headlines, in part because it was such an unusual occurrence (three of the escaped detainees are back in custody). So the construction of a detention center with a “moat” of forbidding wildlife is just performative cruelty.

Consider the gleeful ways that Florida Republicans have promoted Alligator Alcatraz. The state GOP is selling branded merchandise online, such as hats and T-shirts. On his website, the attorney general is hawking his own products, including Alligator Alcatraz buttons and bumper stickers. But immigration detention is a serious matter. It should not be treated like a cheap spectacle, with souvenirs available for purchase.

Immigrant advocacy groups are rightfully alarmed by Alligator Alcatraz. They’re not the only ones: Environmental groups have protested its impact on the surrounding ecosystem, while Indigenous tribes are angry because the camp sits near lands that are sacred to them. The author of a global history of concentration camps has concluded that Alligator Alcatraz meets the criterion for such a label.

The most troubling aspect of Alligator Alcatraz is that it may be a harbinger of things to come. The budget legislation that the president signed into law on July 4 allocates $45 billion for immigration detention over the next four years. Other states may follow Florida’s example and set up detention centers in punishing locales. This will likely happen with little oversight, as the administration has closed the offices that monitored abuse and neglect in detention facilities.

Yes, Homeland Security and ICE are mandated by law to arrest people who are in the country without authorization and to detain them pending removal. That is true no matter who is president. Yet Alligator Alcatraz is a state project, outside the normal scope of federal government accountability. On Thursday, state lawmakers who sought to inspect the facility were denied entry.

In embracing Alligator Alcatraz, the administration is testing the limits of public support for the president’s immigration agenda. According to a June Quinnipiac survey, 57% of voters disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration. A more recent YouGov poll found that Alligator Alcatraz is likewise unpopular with a plurality of Americans.

Alligator Alcatraz is not a joke. It is a dehumanizing political stunt that puts immigrant detainees at genuine risk of harm or death.

Raul A. Reyes is an immigration attorney and contributor to NBC Latino and CNN Opinion. @RaulAReyes; @raulareyes1