Amman: A United Nations special committee has issued a stark warning, stating that the world may be witnessing what could amount to “another Nakba” as Israel pursues plans to forcibly relocate large numbers of Palestinians in Gaza.
The committee condemned Israel’s actions as “ethnic cleansing” and accused the Israeli government of subjecting Palestinians to severe human rights abuses.
The alarm was raised following Israel’s recent announcement to evacuate hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from northern Gaza and relocate them into six designated encampments. The plan has triggered fears of a repeat of the 1948 Nakba – the mass displacement of Palestinians that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel.
“Israel continues to impose unbearable suffering on Palestinians under occupation while accelerating land grabs for its colonial ambitions,” the UN committee stated following an annual fact-finding mission in Amman. It added that Israeli policies appear aimed at “mass displacement and replacing Palestinian communities with Jewish settlers.”
The committee’s report denounced Israel's actions as a deliberate strategy masked by so-called security operations, which it claims are being used to justify land seizures, demolitions, evictions, and other forms of displacement.
The report also outlined grave allegations of systemic abuse by Israeli forces, including torture and sexual violence in prisons and detention centers. Testimonies gathered during the investigation describe a pattern of behavior designed to degrade and instill fear in Palestinian detainees.
Amid the ongoing total blockade of Gaza, the committee sharply criticized Israel for cutting off aid, noting that trucks carrying food remain stalled just kilometers from those in desperate need. “It is difficult to comprehend that a government would intentionally allow an entire population to starve, yet that is the grim reality for the people of Gaza,” the report stated.
The UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories was established by the UN General Assembly in 1968. The current members of the committee include ambassadors from Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Senegal.
The report concluded with a warning that the current trajectory of Israeli policies, if continued, risks triggering a humanitarian disaster on the scale of the original Nakba, when approximately 760,000 Palestinians were displaced in 1948.
