[News] Israel using Palestinian detainees as human shields in Gaz

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeastmonitor.com
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241024-israel-using-palestinian-detainees-as-human-shields-in-gaza-report/>
Israel using Palestinian detainees as human shields in Gaza: Report
Middle East Monitor
October 24, 2024
------------------------------

Israel has used Palestinians as human shields in the besieged Gaza Strip,
forcing detainees into potentially booby-trapped buildings and tunnels to
avoid casualties among its ranks, according to a report published
Thursday, *Anadolu
Agency* reports.

The *CNN *report is based on testimonies from an Israeli soldier and five
former detainees. The soldier said the practice was widespread among
Israeli units operating in Gaza, and acknowledged his unit detained two
Palestinians for the explicit purpose of using them as human shields.

“We told them to enter the building before us,” he said. “If there are any
booby traps, they will explode and not us.”

The practice is so commonplace that Israeli forces pejoratively call it the
“mosquito protocol”.  But *CNN* said the extent that the practice is
employed is not firmly understood, but has taken place in northern Gaza,
Gaza City, Khan Yunis and Rafah.

The soldier told the news network that, in the spring an Israeli
intelligence officer came to his unit with two Palestinians – a 16-year-old
boy and a 20-year-old – and instructed the soldiers to use them as human
shields, claiming they were somehow connected to Hamas. When the soldier
questioned the directive, the officer replied, “It’s better that the
Palestinian will explode and not our soldiers.”

“It’s quite shocking, but after a few months in Gaza you [tend not to]
think clearly,” the soldier said. “You’re just tired. Obviously, I prefer
that my soldiers live. But, you know, that’s not how the world works.”

The soldier said he and other members of his unit complained to a senior
officer who first instructed them not to “think about international law”,
before he eventually acquiesced and freed the two Palestinians.

*READ: New book reveals Netanyahu’s resistance to humanitarian aid for Gaza
during US high-level talks
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241024-new-book-reveals-netanyahus-resistance-to-humanitarian-aid-for-gaza-during-us-high-level-talks/>*

Their release, the soldier said, showed that they were not affiliated with
the Palestinian group, and “that they are not terrorists”.

Israel has repeatedly alleged that Hamas uses Palestinians as human
shields, claiming the practice justifies air strikes that have inflicted
widespread carnage among Gaza’s civilian population.

In the more than one year since Israel began its onslaught following a
Hamas-led cross-border attack, over 42,800 people, mostly women and
children, have been killed in Gaza. Some 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’
7 October, raid, and 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages.

However, since then, it has been revealed by *Haaretz *
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231211-another-israel-witness-confirms-israeli-tanks-killed-own-citizens-on-7-october/>that
helicopters
and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139
soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the
Palestinian Resistance.

One of the former Palestinian detainees used by Israeli forces as human
shields told *CNN* that he was apprehended by Israel while he was
attempting to get food aid for his family after being displaced from his
home in Jabalia by air strikes.

He was transferred to an Israeli military facility where he was held for 47
days and was forced regularly into conducting reconnaissance missions to
keep Israeli troops, who were horrified of improvised explosives, out of
harm’s way.

“They dressed us in military uniforms, put a camera on us, and gave us a
metal cutter,” he said. “They would ask us to do things like, ‘move this
carpet’, saying they were looking for tunnels. ‘Film under the stairs,’
they would say. If they found something, they would tell us to bring it
outside. For example, they would ask us to remove belongings from the
house, clean here, move the sofa, open the fridge and open the cupboard.”

Mohammad Shbeir, 17, said after being abducted by Israeli forces from his
home in Khan Yunis, he was used to clear demolished houses and areas that
could have been booby-trapped with explosives or posed other dangers.

Another 59-year-old man recalls being used to clear up to 80 apartments
after being detained from the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, once the coastal
enclave’s premier health care facility before Israel reduced it to rubble.

Israel claimed the facility was being used as a Hamas command and control
centre – false accusations that were never corroborated despite Israel
occupying the site twice.

The soldier said that the “mosquito protocol” was reinstated within his
unit after he left.

“My own soldiers who refused it in the beginning were back to using this
practice,” he said. “They have no strength like they had in the beginning.”

*WATCH: New Israeli attacks increase risk of famine in Gaza
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241024-new-israeli-attacks-increase-risk-of-famine-in-gaza/>*
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