The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has issued a stark warning: Israel’s plan to forcibly relocate hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to Rafah risks triggering what it calls a “second Nakba.” The agency fears that the move could result in large-scale detention camps along the Egyptian border, trapping desperate families in yet another cycle of dispossession.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini condemned the proposal, making it clear that the agency “cannot and will not” be complicit in any policy that violates international humanitarian law. With over half a million people already displaced and crammed into southern Gaza, further confinement would deepen a humanitarian catastrophe that is already unprecedented in scale.

Far from offering safety, the so-called “humanitarian zones” in Rafah represent the forced containment of a population fleeing death. There is no security, no dignity, and no future in these makeshift enclosures, only the bitter echo of 1948, when Palestinians were driven from their land and scattered in exile.

UNRWA’s warning is not just a statement; it is a call to the world’s conscience. To remain silent now would be to abandon an entire people to permanent displacement. The international community must act, not with words, but with immediate protection for those once again standing on the edge of erasure.