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A feud has broken between the Israeli government and the military over the cost and impact of a planned camp for Palestinians in southern Gaza, as politicians criticised the former prime minister Ehud Olmert for warning that the project would create a “concentration camp” if it goes ahead.
The “humanitarian city” project has become a sticking point in ceasefire talks with Hamas. Israel wants to keep troops stationed across significant parts of Gaza, including the ruins of Rafah city in the south, where the defence minister, Israel Katz, says the camp will be built.
Hamas is pushing for a more comprehensive withdrawal. Husam Badran, a senior member of the group, said the camp plans were a “deliberatively obstructive demand” that would complicate talks, the New York Times reported.
“This would be an isolated city that resembles a ghetto,” he said in a message to the paper. “This is utterly unacceptable and no Palestinian would agree to this.”
Katz revealed last week that he had ordered the army to draw up plans for a camp. It is envisaged that Palestinians would be crammed into an area between the Egyptian border and the Israeli military’s “Morag corridor”, which cuts across the strip.
Katz said initially 600,000 people would move there, and eventually Gaza’s entire population. Those inside would only be allowed to leave for another country, he told Israeli journalists at a briefing.
The plan was unveiled while the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was in Washington DC for an official visit, but it was understood to have his backing. The plan caused immediate alarm among Israel’s allies, including the UK, and domestically.
Olmert, who led Israel from 2006 to 2009, has been the most high-profile domestic critic of the project. He said that if Palestinians were forced to move to the camp, it would constitute ethnic cleansing.
His comments evoking comparisons with Nazi-era Germany were fiercely attacked inside Israel. The heritage minister, Amichai Eliyahu, in effect called for Olmert to be jailed over the comments, with a barely veiled reference to time he served for corruption offences after leaving office.
“[Olmert] already knows prison very well,” Eliyahu said. “There is no other way to shut him down from the hatred and antisemitism he spreads around the world.”
The military has also opposed the project, even as it has followed orders to draw up plans to implement it. In a security cabinet meeting on Sunday night, tensions broke out into the open as the IDF chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, clashed with Netanyahu, Israeli media reported.
Zamir reportedly said the project would divert funds and other resources from the military, sapping its ability to fight and undermining efforts to rescue hostages. His office had previously argued that moving and “concentrating” civilians was not a goal of the war, in response to a legal petition brought by reservists concerned they would face illegal orders to commit war crimes.
Netanyahu reportedly lashed out at Zamir, saying the plans he had presented – which estimated several months of construction work, and perhaps up to a year – were “too expensive and too slow”, Israel’s Channel 12 reported, citing official sources.
“I asked for a realistic plan,” the prime minister reportedly said, demanding that a cheaper, faster timeline for construction be delivered by Tuesday.
Finance ministry officials raised other practical objections to the “humanitarian city” plan, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported. They said an estimated 15bn shekels (£3.3bn) annual cost would be a huge drain on the state’s budget. That cost would probably fall on the Israeli taxpayer, taking money away from schools, hospitals and welfare, the paper added.
Senior Israeli officials estimate that constructing a proposed “humanitarian city” in the Rafah area would cost between $2.7bn and $4bn, Ynet reported. They added that if the plan proceeds, Israel would initially bear nearly the entire cost.
The row came as Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 31 people, according to local hospitals. Twelve people were killed by strikes in southern Gaza, including three who were waiting at an aid distribution point, according to Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, which received the bodies.
Shifa hospital in Gaza City received 12 bodies, including three children and two women, after a series of strikes in the north, according to the hospital’s director, Dr Mohammed Abu Selmia. Al-Awda hospital reported seven killed and 11 wounded in strikes in central Gaza.
UN agencies, including those providing food and health care, reiterated a warning made at the weekend that without adequate fuel they would probably be forced to stop their operations entirely.
In a joint statement, they said hospitals were already going dark and ambulances could no longer move. Transport, water production, sanitation and telecommunications would shut down and bakeries and community kitchens could not operate without fuel, they said.
