Israel's plans for an open-air Gaza camp go too far. We must all act
And what comes next is the plan unveiled by Israeli defence minister Israel Katz to turn what was once Rafah into an open-air camp for 600,000 Palestinians. Katz intends that they will be driven into the camp from all parts of Gaza. It will be a staging post where they will be processed and relocated out of their country. A transit camp, the first step to exile.
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All operations will be marshalled to this end. The Israel Defence Forces will continue to prosecute genocide throughout Gaza by land, air and sea. They will tell civilians to move south to escape it.
The notorious Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, now the only source of food for starving Palestinians, has already closed all but one of its bases. It will relocate to Rafah. It will become the only place where getting aid is a possibility, and people will have to move to get it.
As the estimable Daniel Levy – an analyst and former Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiator – has observed: "If you thought the GHF was just an exercise in humiliation and violence against the vulnerable, think again. It is part of a plan to encourage the displacement of Palestinians. It is a key instrument in the ethnic cleansing now unfolding."
The most significant thing about this plan is its author. We know Israel's government includes fascists who are open advocates for genocide. But Katz isn't one of them. In the dystopian world of Israeli politics, he is regarded as mainstream. He is a senior and veteran member of Likud, Israel's governing party.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy pictured with Israel Katz in July 2024 (Image: UK Government) If Katz is fronting this plan, it has been approved by Benjamin Netanyahu. And if the Israeli prime minister is behind it, then it must have the tacit endorsement of Washington. And it is absolutely consistent with Trump's stated ambition of turning the Gaza Strip into the Riviera of the Middle East.
So, this isn't a kite being flown by people of the fringes of Israeli politics. This is now the official policy of the government: displacement, expulsion, eradication. And this is a country the Labour UK Government still defends and supplies.
Often the horrors of war are unknown at the time, coming to light when conflicts end. Not this time. We are watching this happen in real time.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy calls Katz's plan a 'sticking point'. Thankfully, not all Labour politicians are as glib and spineless – Labour peer Baroness Helena Kennedy was unambiguous in her condemnation of the proposals as a concentration camp to further genocide.
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Kennedy is a lawyer. She knows what every other lawyer knows: these plans represent clear and serial breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which deals with protections for civilians in a war zone. They are a flagrant denial of international law.
Make a note of this, because one day there will be a reckoning. One day all of these Israeli ministers must stand trial and be held to account.
But what do we do right now? This is a turning point. This is the month when genocide ceases to be a disputed accusation and is openly embraced as a policy. This ought to be when the UK Government discovers a backbone and takes a moral stance.
No longer can Israel be regarded as a normal country just like ours. The UK must apply sanctions, unilaterally and with others. It must stop trading with Israel, not just in the sale of weaponry, but everything else too. It must suspend diplomatic relations and work with others to isolate the Israeli government.
And it should be clear no part of this is because of the religion Netanyahu, Katz and others follow but because they are war criminals.
Most of these decisions lie at Westminster. But The Scottish Government – which has been much more strident in its condemnation of Israel than the UK – also needs to look again at how it can put pressure on corporations which are supplying the genocide.
Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes has declined to stop funding arms firms (Image: Andrew Milligan) Leading arms companies such as Raytheon and Leonardo have received substantial taxpayer-funded grants through Scottish Enterprise, a Holyrood government agency.
Scotland's government has declined to intervene, saying that none of the funding is related to arms manufacture. That is not the point. Arms companies need to understand that if they continue their complicity in genocide there will be consequences for their corporate operations as a whole.
The SNP's Friends of Palestine group has made exactly this point to the Scottish Government and implored them to think again and now cut all ties with companies providing arms to Israel.
The Scottish Government is not completely without agency. It has a small but significant amount of leverage. Using it is the right thing to do.
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