Human rights organizations: The forced gathering of Gazans amounts to a crime against humanity.

On Tuesday, July 15, 2025, Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, on its own behalf, along with Gisha, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and Physicians for Human Rights in Israel, sent an urgent letter to Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Meira, and Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, demanding the cancellation of the announced plan to establish a so-called “humanitarian tent city” on the ruins of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The plan aims to gather the residents of the Strip into a single area under Israeli military control.

This appeal was made on behalf of the four organizations by Attorney Suhad Bishara, Director of the Legal Unit at Adalah, who explained that the plan represents a clear and declared intention, following media statements by the Minister of Defense, and constitutes a serious violation of international humanitarian law.

She added that implementing such a plan constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity, and may even amount to genocide according to internationally recognized definitions.

The letter explained that the Minister of Defense's statements, dated July 7, 2025, in which he announced that he had instructed the army to begin establishing a "humanitarian city" in Rafah to accommodate Gaza's residents, reveal a detailed plan to completely control the lives of Palestinian civilians, confining them within a closed area under Israeli military control.

According to reports, the first phase of the plan calls for the gathering of approximately 600,000 residents of the Al-Mawasi area, in preparation for the transfer of the remaining residents of the Strip to the same site. This will require them to undergo security screening before entering and subsequently be prohibited from leaving the area without permission. It was also announced that humanitarian aid will be directed exclusively to this "city," with the aim of forcibly transferring residents to it. This reflects the use of starvation as a tool of pressure and a flagrant violation of a fundamental principle of international humanitarian law.

The organizations emphasized in the letter that this plan comes amid a deteriorating humanitarian situation created by the Israeli military through its ongoing blockade, starvation, widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure, the collapse of the health system, the devastation of local food production mechanisms, the transformation of the entire Gaza Strip into a danger zone, and the waging of a war of extermination against the population as a whole.

In this context, the claim that residents will move voluntarily is nothing more than rhetorical manipulation aimed at concealing a reality of collective coercion, the goal of which is to empty the Strip of its inhabitants and impose a new demographic reality by force.

The letter warned that concentrating the Palestinian population in a single, small area under military control, preventing them from returning to their homes, and denying them their right to move and live in freedom and dignity constitutes forced transfer, prohibited under the Geneva Conventions and international law. It amounts to a war crime and a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and constitutes a policy of ethnic cleansing.

At the end of the letter, the four organizations called on Israeli officials to immediately cancel the plan and refrain from any action to implement it on the ground.

In a comment, Dr. Suhad Bishara, Director of the Legal Unit at the Adalah Legal Center, said: "The repeated statements and systematic planning for a plan of this kind constitute an explicit declaration and detailed planning for the commission of additional war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip. The international community must take action to prevent these crimes from being carried out."