Ex-Israeli PM Olmert calls planned city for Palestinians ‘concentration camp’

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Israel's plans to build a “humanitarian city” to move Palestinians out of Gaza, "a concentration camp."

“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry. If [the Palestinians] will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city,’ then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing,” Olmert told the Guardian in an interview.

“When they build a camp where they [plan to] ‘clean’ more than half of Gaza, then the inevitable understanding of the strategy of this [is that] it is not to save [Palestinians]. It is to deport them."

Israeli opposition politician Yair Lapid also criticised the plan.

“A bad idea from every possible perspective - security, political, economic, logistical, the [Israeli army] of course opposes it loudly; there is nothing good in it except an attempt to create a process that will ultimately leave Israel in Gaza out of no choice,” Israeli Army Radio reported him saying.