Satellite imagery indicates devastation of Rafah before the proposal to relocate the entire population of Gaza to a ‘humanitarian city’ in the south. Israeli demolition operations ongoing in Gaza’s southern Rafah Governorate have been intensified aggressively, an Al Jazeera investigation by the Sanad investigations unit has established.
Israel’s defence ministry has published a plan to resettle 600,000 individuals into what analysts claim would be “concentration camps” within the region in southern Gaza, with intentions to roll this out to the entirety of the Strip’s population.
Sanad’s analysis of satellite imagery through July 4, 2025, indicates the number of destroyed buildings in Rafah increasing to around 28,600 from 15,800 on April 4, 2025, as indicated by data from the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT). This is to say that in the period from early April to early July alone, some 12,800 buildings were destroyed – a heavily increased pace of demolitions that has coincided with Israel’s renewed incursion into Rafah begun late in March 2025.
A draft proposal viewed by Reuters bearing the signature of the US-supported Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) outlined a plan for a “Humanitarian Transit Area” where residents of Gaza would “stay temporarily, deradicalise, re-integrate and be prepared to resettle if they so desire”.
The minister added that Israel hopes Palestinians will “voluntarily emigrate” from the Gaza Strip to the outside world, stating that this scheme “should be accomplished”.
He also emphasised that the plan would not be executed by the Israeli army, but rather by international organisations, without indicating which agencies would be enforcing it.
Philippe Lazzarini, director of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which has been prohibited by Israel, issued a warning against the latest mass forced eviction plan.
“This in effect would create mass concentration camps at the frontier with Egypt for the Palestinians, uprooted again and again over generations,” he stated, and that it would “deny Palestinians any hopes of a better future in their homeland.”.
Israeli. Political commentator Ori Goldberg explained to Al Jazeera that Israel’s plan was “all facts and purposes a concentration camp” for Palestinians living in the south of Gaza, and that Israel is thereby perpetrating “what is an overt crime against humanity under international humanitarian law.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, announced to journalists on Monday that the first 600,000 Palestinians who reside in the coastal al-Mawasi region would move to Rafah, the site of what he described as a new “humanitarian city” for Palestinians, within 60 days of any finalised ceasefire agreement. As per Katz, Gaza’s whole civilian population of over 2 million will eventually be resettled in this southern city.
