Israeli soldiers are using Palestinian civilians as human shields in Gaza to enter and clear tunnels and buildings they suspect may have been booby-trapped, a leading Israeli NGO and newspaper have reported.
The practice was so widespread across different units fighting in Gaza that it could in effect be considered a “protocol”, said Nadav Weiman, the executive director of Breaking the Silence, a group founded by Israeli combat veterans to document military abuses.
The group has collected testimony describing the practice from veterans of the 10-month war in Gaza. The accounts they have heard match those reported in an investigation by the newspaper Haaretz, which claimed that the chief of staff’s office was aware of the practice.
“The senior ranks know about it,” one source said to have taken part in finding civilians to serve as human shields told the paper. “Our lives are more important than their lives,” Haaretz quoted commanders telling their soldiers.
The practice is said to be so routine that Israeli soldiers have a name for the human shields, who are referred to as shawish – informal slang for a low-ranking soldier – and the process was described by several witnesses.
Palestinian civilians, mostly young men, are picked up by Israeli soldiers, dressed in Israeli army uniforms, then sent into tunnels and damaged houses ahead of Israeli forces, soldiers told Haaretz and Breaking the Silence.
Their hands are tied together and a camera is attached to their bodies as they go in. “Palestinians are told: ‘Do one mission of … a [tunnel] shaft and you’re free,’” Haaretz quoted one soldier saying.
Afterwards, the men are reportedly released to join their families – underlining to the soldiers who spoke to Haaretz and Breaking the Silence that they were civilians who did not pose any military threat and had been detained only for the clearance operations.
Footage of Palestinian civilians, including some in IDF uniform, being sent into devastated buildings was obtained by Al Jazeera and broadcast in July.
Breaking the Silence said it had heard reports of civilians being used as human shields from the early stages of the war in Gaza. Initially it said it thought it had been one commander acting illegally, but testimony started coming in from soldiers stationed across the territory.
“We heard it from different units, fighting in different times and different places inside Gaza,” Weiman said. “Then we understood it’s something a lot more widespread – or even, I could say, a protocol – in the IDF.”
One soldier had been told Palestinian civilians were being used to replace the dog units that search for explosives “because too many dogs had died”, he added.
Many soldiers had raised concerns about a practice that is illegal under international and Israeli law, Weiman said.
In Israel in 2005, the supreme court banned using Palestinians as human shields in response to a petition against the military’s “neighbour procedure” in the West Bank, in which soldiers forced civilians to go ahead of them when raiding houses there.
Haaretz also reported heated arguments, including shouting, between soldiers and commanders ordering the use of human shields. “Most of them realised there was a problematic incident here, and it was hard for them to process,” one source said.
The IDF said that the use of human shields was banned, that orders had been “clarified” to troops on the ground, and that the allegations reported by Haaretz would be reviewed.
“The orders and directives of the IDF prohibit the use of Gazan civilians captured in the field for military missions that endanger them,” a spokesperson said.
The reports of the Israel Defense Forces using civilian human shields come after the Israeli military has repeatedly justified attacks on civilian targets, including schools and hospitals, by alleging Hamas uses them, and uses the people inside them as human shields.
“How we can say that kind of thing after we’re doing this, after we’re taking Palestinians as human shields?” Weiman said.
Additional reporting: Quique Kierszenbaum
