(Corrects word in headline to ‘Humanitarian’ from ‘Human.’)
By Jonathan Landay and Aram Roston
(Reuters) -A controversial U.S.-backed aid group proposed building camps called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” inside – and possibly outside – Gaza to house the Palestinian population, according to a proposal reviewed by Reuters, outlining its vision of “replacing Hamas’ control over the population in Gaza.”
The $2 billion plan, created sometime after February 11 for the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, was submitted to the Trump administration and recently discussed in the White House, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The plan, reviewed by Reuters, describes the camps as “large-scale” and “voluntary” places where the Gazan population could “temporarily reside, deradicalize, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so.”
The Washington Post made a reference to GHF plans to build housing compounds for Palestinian non-combatants in May.
A slide deck seen by Reuters goes into granular detail on the “Humanitarian Transit Zones,” including how they would be implemented and what they would cost.
It calls for using the sprawling facilities to “gain trust with the local population” and to facilitate U.S. President Donald Trump’s “vision for Gaza.”
Reuters could not independently determine the status of the plan, who submitted it, or whether it is still under consideration.
The aid group, responding to questions from Reuters, denied that it had submitted a proposal and said the slides “are not a GHF document.” GHF said it had studied “a range of theoretical options to safely deliver aid in Gaza,” but that it “is not planning for or implementing Humanitarian Transit Areas (HTAs).”
Rather, the organization said it is solely focused on food distribution in Gaza.
A spokesperson for SRS, a for-profit contracting company that works with GHF, told Reuters “we have had no discussions with GHF about HTAs, and our ‘next phase’ is feeding more people. Any suggestion otherwise is entirely false and misrepresents the scope of our operations.”
The document included the GHF name on the cover and SRS on several slides.
RELOCATION FEARS
On February 4 Trump first publicly said that the U.S. should “take over” the war-battered enclave and rebuild it as “the Riviera of the Middle East” after resettling the population of 2.3 million Palestinians elsewhere.
Trump’s comments angered many Palestinians and humanitarian groups about the possible forced relocation from Gaza. Even if the GHF proposal is no longer under consideration, the idea of moving a large portion of the population into camps will only deepen such worries, several humanitarian experts told Reuters.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The proposal was laid out in a slide presentation that a source said was submitted to the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem earlier this year.
The U.S. State Department declined to comment. A senior administration official said, “nothing of the like is under consideration. Also, no resources are being directed to that end in any way.”
The source working on the project said that it had not moved forward due to a lack of funds. Reuters previously reported that GHF had attempted to set up a Swiss bank account from which to solicit donations, but UBS and Goldman Sachs declined to work with the organization.
The Israeli Embassy in the U.S. did not respond to a request for comment.
Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, to told Reuters it “categorically” rejects the GHF, calling it “not a relief organization but rather an intelligence and security tool affiliated with the Israeli occupation, operating under a false humanitarian guise.”
‘LARGE-SCALE’ CAMPS
The undated slide presentation, which includes photos dated February 11, said that the GHF is “working to secure” over $2 billion for the project, to “build, secure and oversee large-scale Humanitarian Transit Areas (HTAs) inside and potentially outside Gaza strip for the population to reside while Gaza is demilitarized and rebuilt.”
The Humanitarian Transit Areas described in the slides would be the next phase in an operation that began with GHF opening food distribution sites in the enclave in late May, according to two sources involved in the project.
GHF coordinates with the Israeli military and uses private U.S. security and logistics companies to get food aid into Gaza. It is favored by the Trump Administration and Israel to carry out humanitarian efforts in Gaza as opposed to the U.N.-led system which it says let militants divert aid.
Hamas denies this and says Israel is using hunger as a weapon.
In June U.S. State Department approved $30 million in funding for the GHF and called on other countries to also support the group.
The United Nations has called GHF’s operation “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality rules. The U.N. human rights office says it has recorded at least 613 killings at GHF aid points and near humanitarian convoys run by other relief groups including the U.N.
One slide outlining a timeline said a camp would be operational within 90 days of the launch of the project and that it would house 2,160 people, along with a laundry, restrooms, showers and a school.
A source working on the project said that the slide deck is part of a planning process that began last year and envisions a total of eight camps, each one capable of sheltering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
The proposal did not specify how the Palestinians would be relocated into the camps, or where the camps could be built outside Gaza, but a map shows arrows pointing to Egypt and Cyprus as well as other points labeled “Additional Destination?”
GHF would “oversee and regulate all civil activities required for construction, deradicalization and temporary voluntary relocation,” the proposal said.
Responding to questions from Reuters, three humanitarian experts expressed alarm over details of the plan to build camps.
“There is no such thing as voluntary displacement amongst a population that has been under constant bombardment for nearly two years and has been cut off from essential aid,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of the Refugees International advocacy group and a former senior U.S. Agency for International Development official who reviewed the plan.
The source who worked on planning for the camps told Reuters that the intent “is to take the fear factor away,” enabling Palestinians to “escape control of Hamas” and providing them “a safe area to house their families.”
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Gaza’s health ministry says Israel’s retaliatory military assault on the enclave has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, caused a hunger crisis, and displaced nearly Gaza’s entire population internally.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay and Aram Roston; Editing by Don Durfee and Michael Learmonth)
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