Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau
Mondoweiss / July 31, 2025
Israel says it has a plan to build a “humanitarian city” built over the ruins of Rafah for 600,000 Palestinians in Gaza. A local gang lord in Gaza and the United Arab Emirates will be running and supplying services to the concentration camp.
On July 24, an article appeared in The Wall Street Journal under the name of Yasser Abu Shabab, an infamous gang leader reportedly backed and armed by Israel who has been leading hundreds of gunmen in looting aid trucks passing through southern Gaza’s Rafah area. Despite reports that Abu Shabab is illiterate, the article allegedly written by him says that his so-called “Popular Forces” control large parts of eastern Rafah, which is being prepared to receive displaced Palestinians.
That the WSJ ran the article is unsurprising. But what was most notable about it was what it revealed about Abu Shabab’s involvement in an Israeli plan to “concentrate” Gaza’s population inside a “humanitarian city” to be built over the ruins of Rafah. Recent reports also suggest that the United Arab Emirates may be involved in this project, providing infrastructure and services to the concentration camp.
Toward the end of the WSJ article, the role of Abu Shabab’s group in all this became clear: the “Popular Forces” was preparing the area under its control in eastern Rafah to receive 600,000 displaced Palestinians from across Gaza.
Remember that 600,000 figure.
It isn’t the first time this number has appeared. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz outlined a plan to build a “closed zone” on the border between eastern Rafah and Egypt that is meant to house 600,000 Palestinians. Katz has reportedly instructed the Israeli army to build this concentration camp during a prospective 60-day ceasefire, and it would see the forcible relocation of Palestinians from the coastal “safe zone” of al-Mawasi to the flattened remains of Rafah.
This plan has drawn widespread international condemnation, regarding the proposed forcible transfer of civilians as a war crime and a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute.
One of the organizations likely to be responsible for the distribution of “aid” to this concentration camp is already well-known: the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has become infamous for running “death traps” under the guise of distributing food, where aid massacres have killed over 1,000 people, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
But a lesser-known co-conspirator in Israel’s concentration camp scheme appears to be the UAE. The UAE’s role in the scheme is tied to an ongoing operation codenamed “Gallant Knight 3” (Al-Faris al-Shahm).
Since April 2025, the Israeli army has been carrying out a wide-scale demolition operation in eastern Rafah, including the destruction of approximately 28,600 buildings. Reports confirm that over 90 percent of Rafah’s residential neighbourhoods have been razed to the ground, including the neighbourhoods of al-Jneina, Tal al-Sultan, the Saudi neighbourhood, and others.
Those are the areas where the concentration camp will presumably be built, and Abu Shabab’s “Popular Forces” would run “security” over it as an Israeli proxy, controlling the Palestinian population in the zone. But security control alone is not sufficient. The concentration camp requires infrastructure, water, and food. This is where the UAE comes in.
Under Operation Gallant Knight 3, the UAE has established six water desalination plants in Egypt’s al-Arish, right on the border with Gaza. According to reports from UAE state-controlled media, the combined production capacity of these plants is approximately 1.2 million gallons per day — enough to serve over 600,000 people, the reports say — and will be pumped into the Gaza Strip.
The appearance of this same figure — 600,000 people — in the WSJ article, the Israeli Defense Minister’s statements, and the UAE’s service projection does not appear to be a coincidence.
The UAE will be providing ‘humanitarian’ services to a concentration camp
Operation Gallant Knight was ordered by the UAE’s Sheikh Muhammad bin Zayed al-Nahyan in November 2023, shortly after the war on Gaza began. Its stated aim was to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza and to provide infrastructure like desalination plants to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the Strip. Over the past week, the operation has also included aid drops over Gaza as part of the “Birds of Goodness” airlift, an initiative the UAE has carried out in cooperation with Jordan.
But the most recent plan to supply desalinated water to southern Gaza marks a clear level of coordination with Israeli military objectives in Gaza. The UAE has chosen the same area identified by the Israeli army for its designated “humanitarian zone.” It is also the same area occupied by Abu Shabab and his armed group.
The UAE will provide the water, Abu Shabab will provide “security,” and the GHF may possibly be the organization tapped to distribute “aid.” Palestinians are already being pressured to head to southern Gaza, where they are promised that they will find food, water, and safety.
What happens to the rest of the Gaza Strip’s population not part of those 600,000?
Reports by the United Nations and human rights organizations have documented that civilians who remained in northern or central Gaza, or in areas not designated as “humanitarian,” were subjected to intense shelling, deprivation of food and medical supplies, and home demolitions.
This is the message Israel seeks to deliver through its various and repeated evacuation orders: those who obey may be allowed to reach the humanitarian zones, only to be later targeted. Those who remain are subjected to torture, arrest, deportation to prisons in the Negev or inside Israel, or killed in front of their families with their homes demolished over their heads.
The Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau are the Mondoweiss staff members based in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip
