Wafa Aludaini
Israeli occupation forces have repeatedly used Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the beleaguered Gaza Strip as human shields since 1976, placing civilian lives deliberately and unnecessarily at risk, according to reports by several international human rights organisations. During the ongoing Israeli atrocities in Gaza, Israeli forces have largely intensified the use of this policy. Extensive evidence of the Israeli occupation army using human shields has been detailed in statements by its victims and in videos released online.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has documented several testimonies of Palestinian civilians used as human shields by the Israeli occupation army who forced them into dangerous situations to secure and protect its military personnel and operations in several areas, including inside Al-Shifa Hospital.
Nadeen Abu Aloun, a 23-year-old graduate who studied English, recalls three occasions Israeli troops used her as a human shield. Her home in Gaza City is adjacent to the Al-Shifa Hospital, where she lived with 24 people in the same apartment. The first time she was used as a human shield was on 20 March during the invasion of Al-Shifa Hospital.
“I was sitting with my siblings and cousins when the occupation army invaded. They savagely stormed our home for no reason, we are ordinary people. They asked me to come with them as I was the only one who spoke English,” she recalls. “Two Israeli soldiers, who were armed to the teeth, surrounded me and asked me to search the rooms and closets for money and gold, with their guns pressed up close to my shoulders.”
“They then asked us to leave the house and go south of Gaza, but we couldn’t as there was no transportation,” Nadeen explains. “So, we went to another home of our relatives, and then again, they invaded the house. We were all women and kids. They introduced themselves as Americans, inspected us individually, and ordered us to get out, leaving everything, including our stuff. While evacuating us, they forced me to walk in front of the soldiers to secure them; they looked terrified. After three days, at midnight, they invaded our friend’s house in the middle of Gaza City where we – all women and kids – were staying. They told us to go to the south otherwise, they would shoot us. When we asked them for a flashlight, as there was no transportation, no lights, no phones with us, and we had kids and elderly people. They sarcastically told us, ‘Follow the light of the moon.’”
The vast majority of Palestinians who have been killed by Israel are civilians, with occupation forces and officials justifying the high death toll by falsely claiming that Hamas uses civilians as human shields. This accusation is echoed ad nauseam in Western corporate media, yet there has been no evidence to verify the allegations. During Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza in 2009 and 2014, Amnesty International found no evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian resistance factions directed the movement of civilians to shield military objectives, nor did fighters prevent residents from leaving buildings or force them to stay in or around buildings used by fighters.
Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and other international human rights organisations did, however, find ample evidence that Israel used Palestinian civilians as human shields. During the current genocidal war, Israel has repeated the same fantasies. Even though the nature of the ongoing onslaught is different, videos leaked from Israeli drones downed by the Palestinian resistance and broadcast by several Arabic channels reveal the weakness of Israel’s “human shields” claims.
Several pieces of footage obtained by Al Jazeera Arabic show Israeli troops forcing Palestinian detainees to search destroyed buildings or serve as cover for the Israeli soldiers.
One video depicts two instances where Palestinian prisoners were forced to search destroyed buildings. The video also showed a Palestinian captive being forced to enter a tunnel after being tied with a rope with a camera attached to his body, and additionally showed Israeli soldiers forcing other detainees to wear military clothing to be used as human shields. In one case, a wounded captive was used as a human shield and forced to enter destroyed homes in Gaza with the bodies of martyrs scattered at their entrances. Another, dated December 2023, captured what appears to be Israeli soldiers using a detained Palestinian man as a human shield to inspect an abandoned school in Gaza City while being monitored by drones.
Israeli allegations about the use of human shields by the Palestinian resistance during the ongoing onslaught on Gaza have also been refuted many times. On 6 June, an Israeli occupation air strike hit a United Nations school sheltering about 6,000 displaced Palestinians overnight in Nuseirat Refugee Camp, killing at least 40 people, including 14 children and nine women, and injuring 74 others. The Israeli military released the names and pictures of 14 members of Palestinian armed groups who they claimed were operating from the school and who, it said, had been killed in the strike. After verifying the list, the Gaza Media Office debunked the Israeli claims. The office found that a number of those listed were still alive or were living overseas, while others had been killed in previous attacks in different locations.
Even if the allegations that the Palestinian resistance used civilians as human shields were true, the Israeli occupation army must abide by international law, especially the principle of proportionality. Instead, Israel deliberately flouts international law. Despite two UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate stop to the war and orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to end the invasion and improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Israel continues its military operations. The same dirty policy has been widely used by the occupation troops in the occupied West Bank. Last May, in the Tulkarem refugee camp, three Palestinian children were used as human shields, according to documentation collected by Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCIP). “In all three incidents, armed Israeli soldiers forced the boys to walk in front of them as soldiers searched Palestinian homes and neighbourhoods in the Tulkarem refugee camp, and in two cases, Israeli forces fired weapons positioned on the boys’ shoulders.”
Another wounded Palestinian young man was used as a cover during a raid in Jenin in June. The occupation soldiers strapped him to the hood of an Israeli military vehicle and invaded the town. The family of the wounded man, Mujahed Azmi, said that the Israeli soldiers used him as a human shield instead of allowing him to get medical care after they shot and injured him.
These are only the most recent incidents, but the list of Israel’s abuses of Palestinian civilians is long and ongoing and shows no signs of stopping.
