The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) are systematically using Palestinian civilians as human shields during their operations in the Gaza Strip.
‘Our lives are more important than their lives’ told Israeli soldiers justifying the use of Palestinians as human shields to avoid Israeli casualties.
Palestinian civilians are forced to accompany Israeli soldiers during operations and are sent ahead of the soldiers to inspect potentially dangerous areas.
“They forced me to wear the Israeli army uniform, enter houses, and take pictures of them”
With these words, a young Palestinian man narrated the harsh experience that he lived through over the days in which the Israeli troops used him as a human shield during its ongoing aggression in the Gaza Strip.
The young man recounts the horrors he lived through since the Israeli occupation forces arrested him east of Rafah last June, saying “A soldier came and took me and another detainee and led us to the ground floor of the house and informed us that they would use us as a human shields to take pictures of houses, streets, roads and tunnels.”
“We accepted under the threat of being shot at and assaulted with gun butts and hands,” he added.
Terrifying Testimony
“Israeli troopers forced us to wear the Israeli military uniform and then they took us on foot to an area about five minutes away from where we were, and during this time one of them put a helmet on my head with a camera and headphones, and they ordered us to enter a house and film it with the camera on the helmet,” said M (22 years old).
Under the threat of soldiers shooting M and his companion, they did what they were forced to do by entering the houses and filming them with the camera on the helmet above their heads while entering, the soldiers directed them to move inside the house right and left and to focus on filming on the ground floors.
“After filming and finishing the house, the Israeli military enters the house, shoots and tampers with its contents, and destroys them,” M added.
Photographing Destroyed Tank and Getting Injured
M remained in detention for 42 days and was used as a human shield about 15 times. He still remembers what happened on Tuesday morning, 6 August 2024, when an Israeli soldier came and forced him to go out with him.
M says”This time I was alone, so I felt scared because we were usually taken two or three together, so I refused to go out, so the soldier hit me with the butt of the gun in my back, and forced me to go out with him, and they put me in a tank that drove for about ten minutes, then stopped, and they took me down from the tank and asked me, without wearing their military uniform, to go to a previously destroyed tank, to photograph it, but I refused out of fear.”
“Under the beating and the soldiers threatening to shoot me, they placed a helmet with the camera on my head and I headed to the tank, and the soldiers were behind me, and about ten meters before I reached the targeted tank, I felt a prick in my chest on the right side, I looked at the place of pain and saw that I was bleeding, so I fell to the ground and fainted,” M added.
Leaked Videos
Leaked videos documented the Israeli occupation forces using Palestinian civilian detainees as human shields and forcing them to explore dangerous combat zones.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that these videos are an example of a systematic policy implemented by the Israeli military, stressing that it documented dozens of cases of using civilians as human shields and granting immunity to the forces’ actions, which constitutes a war crime.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor explained in a previous statement that the horrific scenes published by Al Jazeera of leaked video clips from the Israeli military showing the use of civilians, including wounded detainees, as human shields, and forcing them to enter dangerous combat zones, attaching cameras to their bodies and tying them up with ropes, express the brutal and inhumane behavior of the Israeli army, and constitute a serious violation of the rules of international humanitarian law.
According to Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, since the start of the Israeli occupation’s ground operations at the end of October 2023, it has documented dozens of cases in which the Israeli army has used Palestinian civilians as human shields and has forced some of them to carry out military actions that pose a direct threat to their lives, including entering buildings or tunnels or searching for explosives and potential tunnels, in addition to detaining others in homes and sites in areas of clashes, which puts their lives at risk, in violation of the rules of international humanitarian law.
Using a Family as a Human Shield
On the evening of June 27, The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor documented a complex crime against a civilian family consisting of an elderly mother and four of her children, including three girls and a granddaughter who was no more than a year and a half old, by storming their home and shooting and throwing bombs directly at them inside their home in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood east of Gaza City.
Israeli troops detained the whole family while they were injured inside and near Israeli tanks for more than three hours in a dangerous combat zone, using them as human shields,
Later, Israeli soldiers ran over the mother, Safiya Hassan Musa al-Jamal, 65 years old, and killed her after she was hit by Israeli tank tracks while she was still alive in front of her son.
Tragedies of Al-Shifa Medical Complex
During the Israeli forces’ storming of Al-Shifa Medical Complex last March, they used civilian patients and displaced Palestinians as human shields and exploited them to fortify its military operations inside the hospital, to form a cover behind its forces and military vehicles, and to send them under threat to homes and residential buildings surrounding the medical complex asking their residents to evacuate them, before the Israeli army carried out its storming operations.
“Israeli forces ordered me and three other young men to enter several rooms inside Al-Shifa Medical Complex, after installing cameras on our heads, and forced us to move by issuing orders to them remotely towards specific places to examine them,” said Kh. F, a displaced Palestinian man.
Israel, flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since last October.
Since then, an ongoing Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians.
Over 10 months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.
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