RAFAH, (PIC)
Talk has returned over the past hours about plans to establish what are called humanitarian shelter centers in Rafah, which is under the control of the Israeli occupation army, amid a lack of clarity regarding their management mechanisms and the identity of those actually running them on the ground, except for falling under the responsibility of the Peace Council.
Although the talk is presented as a humanitarian step within the path of implementing the plan of US President Donald Trump to stop the war of genocide, the details leaked so far reveal selective criteria for entering these centers, and a clear absence of any precise definition of the role of the militias and armed gangs formed by the Israeli occupation army in various areas of the eastern Strip, bringing back old fears that these centers will turn into a tool to divide Gaza geographically and demographically, not to protect it.
Dangerous details
The Hebrew newspaper Israel Hayom reported on Tuesday evening, quoting unnamed sources, that the Peace Council will launch within weeks a pilot project to manage humanitarian shelter centers in areas of the Gaza Strip that are not, according to the newspaper, under the control of the Hamas Movement.
According to the report, the Tal al-Sultan area near Rafah will be the first destination to which civilians will be directed, provided that entry is limited to those described by the newspaper as “not carrying weapons and having no links to Hamas.” This is a loose criterion that opens the door to sorting and classifying the population based on a security assessment controlled by Israel.
According to the newspaper, these centers will have forces armed with non-lethal weapons to maintain internal order, while the occupation army will continue to extend its control and tighten its grip on what Israel calls the “Yellow Line.” This is the separating border drawn unilaterally by Tel Aviv inside the Strip, which Israel has expanded westward to include more than 70% of the area of the Strip.
Dual map
Thus, a dual map is formed: demilitarized “shelter” areas subject to formal international supervision, and a much wider area over which the occupation army continues to impose its actual control without any announced timeframe for withdrawal from it.
The Israeli reports did not provide any details about the entity that will handle the classification and sorting of the population allowed to enter Tal al-Sultan, nor the mechanism by which the “unarmed” will be distinguished from the “armed,” nor the guarantees that prevent this criterion from being exploited politically to exclude specific groups from receiving medical and food aid, which the Hebrew newspaper said would be directed exclusively to these centers “with the aim of gradually undermining Hamas’s grip” on the population of the Strip. This phrase itself reveals that the declared purpose of the project is political and security-related, and not humanitarian as announced.
The Green City returns to the forefront
The proposal being talked about is one that the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor had previously warned of its danger last January, when it revealed an Israeli-American agreement to establish what is called the Green City in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, and considering it the solution to shelter the displaced population of the Gaza Strip for about 1,000 days in worn-out displacement tents.
The Euro-Med Monitor indicated that the plan involves grave risks, including the imposition of arrangements that could effectively lead to the displacement of the Palestinian population from their original places of residence, and turning wide parts of the Strip into closed military zones under the direct control of the Israeli occupation army.
At the time, the Euro-Med Monitor confirmed that the Israeli occupation forces are working alongside contractors to clear the area entirely under Israeli control, remove rubble, level the ground, and prepare it for the establishment of that city, and it expected then that the pace of these preparations would accelerate during the coming period.
The Euro-Med Monitor indicated that this plan is another example of failure to deal with the repercussions of the ongoing genocide committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, as it proposes unrealistic ideas aimed as a whole at demographic redistribution in the Strip, changing its composition, and imposing a new reality based on control, dominance, and humiliation, and does not provide real solutions to the suffering of civilians.
The Monitor warned that the circulated plans to reshape the area under the name of the “Green City” in Rafah will be used to perpetuate the isolation of the population and forcibly assemble them in ghettos under military control, leading to the perpetuation of their displacement from their original areas of residence and the imposition of destructive living conditions that affect their basic means of survival.
Using the pretext of establishing a “Green City” to shelter Palestinians who will be forced to move to an area currently under the control of Israel and the armed militias it formed represents, according to the Euro-Med Monitor, a highly dangerous model for re-engineering the place and the population under direct Israeli military administration, effectively turning this area into a population “ghetto,” especially when combined with the erasing of Rafah and the elimination of the population’s right to return to their original places of residence, and the inherent risks of creating a permanent change in the demographic and geographic map of the Gaza Strip.
The Monitor believes that the establishment of the so-called “Green City,” in the circulated formula and what is being implemented on the ground, enshrines an integrated system of acts prohibited under international humanitarian law and amounts to international crimes. This is because it is based on the forced and unlawful transfer of civilians by forcing them to move to a specific area under the actual control of the occupation power, while practically preventing return to original places of residence or turning them into closed military zones, and it is managed as a closed system that controls entry, exit, and residence, thereby unlawfully imposing a severe deprivation of physical liberty.
This is accompanied by a deliberate and grave deprivation of fundamental rights on discriminatory grounds, constituting persecution, as well as the widespread destruction of property without urgent military necessity, and violating the sanctity of the dead and the rights of families by removing rubble before recovering bodies, which hinders identification and proper burial, and what results from the erasing of Rafah in terms of undermining the preservation of physical evidence necessary for investigation and accountability.
Shelter centers under the control of the occupation in Rafah or elsewhere are considered a complementary mechanism to the existing path of genocide. This is because they turn widespread destruction and population displacement into a permanent reality by erasing Rafah and preventing the population from returning to their homes, lands, and livelihoods, then pushing them into a security-managed isolation area with gates, permits, and surveillance, and subjecting them to military control, allowing for the imposition of predictable and systematic restrictions on food, water, medicine, fuel, and health services, as well as on movement and work, and perpetuating forced dependency on aid controlled by the occupation power or gangs it delegates, according to the Euro-Med Monitor.
Peace Council, international mandate and ambiguity in implementation
The “Peace Council” is based on UN Security Council Resolution 2803 issued in November 2025, which authorized the deployment of a multinational “international stabilization force” to support the administration and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip during a transitional phase, following the announcement by Trump of the establishment of the Council in mid-January 2026.
The UN mandate assumes that Israeli forces will withdraw from most areas of the Strip as soon as this force is deployed, provided that a Palestinian “national committee,” supervised by the “Gaza Executive Council” chaired by High Representative Nickolay Mladenov, takes over the management of the daily affairs of the population.
However, the facts on the ground so far are moving in a different direction from this vision. The international forces, whose first vehicles have begun to arrive at the “Endurance” logistical support area in the south of Israel in preparation for their gradual deployment inside the Strip, are scheduled to deploy first around Rafah within the “Yellow Line” specified and controlled by the Israeli occupation army, rather than replacing it.
Thus, the international deployment, at least in its first version, turns into an arrangement managed in coordination with the occupation within a limited space, while the occupation forces continue to impose their security and military reality on the largest part of the Strip.
The reports do not provide any data yet about the role of the armed militias created or activated by the occupation forces in their areas of control, which human rights and UN bodies have documented as having contributed to creating an unsafe environment that practically obstructs the arrival of rescue and relief teams.
While the announced plans speak of a new Palestinian police force, and of restricting or disarming resistance factions, the documents available so far do not offer any clear vision of how to dismantle these collaborator militias, which are involved in killings and security missions for the occupation, as well as robbery and managing lawlessness.
A dividing line without announced criteria
What brings together these scattered threads, the leaked Israeli plan, the UN Peace Council mandate, and the precedent of the “Green City,” is the absence of any clear answer to a fundamental question: Who decides who deserves protection and assistance in Gaza, and by what criterion?
Between a “Yellow Line” drawn unilaterally by the Israeli occupation, “shelter centers” opened according to unannounced security criteria, and collaborator militias, a reality on the ground is gradually taking shape that divides the Strip into regions with varying rights and services, away from any unified vision for its management or reconstruction. This reinforces fears of turning “humanitarian shelter” into a new political and security tool to reshape the demographic map of Gaza