Israel's Israel Katz says he has instructed its military to prepare a plan to move all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp in the south of the territory, Israeli media reports say.

Katz told journalists on Monday he wanted to establish a "humanitarian city" on the ruins of the city of Rafah to initially house about 600,000 Palestinians - and eventually the whole 2.3 million population, BBC reported.

He said the goal was to bring people inside after security screening to ensure they were not Hamas operatives, and that they would not be allowed to leave.

If conditions allowed, he added, construction would begin during a 60-day ceasefire that Israel and Hamas are trying to negotiate.

One Israeli human rights lawyer condemned it as nothing less than an "operational plan for a crime against humanity".

"It is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip," Michael Sfard told the Guardian newspaper.

The UN has also previously warned that the deportation or forcible transfer of an occupied territory's civilian population is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law and "tantamount to ethnic cleansing".

There was no immediate comment from the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.

Later on Monday, during a meeting at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal that the U.S. take over post-war Gaza and permanently resettle its population elsewhere.

Netanyahu said: "I think President Trump has a brilliant vision. It's called free choice. If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave...

"We're working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realize what they always say - that they wanted to give the Palestinians a better future."

Trump said: "We've had great co-operation from... surrounding countries, great cooperation from every single one of them. So, something good will happen."

In March, Arab states backed a $53bn (£39bn) Egyptian alternative to Trump's plan for Gaza's reconstruction that would allow the Palestinians living there to stay in place.

They also stressed their "categorical rejection of any form of displacement of the Palestinian people", describing such an idea as "a gross violation of international law, a crime against humanity and ethnic cleansing".

T