Israeli forces accused of using Gazan family as human shield

Gaza Strip (QNN)- The Israeli forces continue to use their tanks to deliberately run over live Palestinian civilians and crush their bodies, in addition to using civilians as human shields, in the ground operations of their crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip that has been ongoing since 7 October, said the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

The Euro-Med Monitor field team documented a “compound and comprehensive crime” against a civilian family comprising an elderly woman and her four children, including three young women and a one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter.

According to the rights group, the family was attacked with gunfire and bombs after Israeli forces stormed their house on Thursday evening, 27 June. They were later taken outside and detained for over three hours despite their injuries in their home, near Israeli tanks in a dangerous combat zone, where they were used as “human shields” and places in several tanks.

The 65-year-old mother, identified as Safiya Hassan Musa Al-Jamal, was run over by an Israeli tank and killed in front of her son.

In his testimony to the Euro-Med Monitor team, the elderly woman’s son, Muhannad Al-Jamal, 28, said: “There were two tanks on the right and left surrounding the roundabout. After the soldiers entered the tank, it started to move backward and ran over my mother.”

“When I saw the scene, I thought I had gone insane and began to cry and scream…. I fled, fearing for my life, as the tank on the right tried to run me over. However, the two tanks moved in another direction, and the tank on the left was trying to run my mother over once more, but that did not happen.”

Euro-Med Monitor has previously documented many instances of the Israeli army killing Palestinian civilians by intentionally running over live civilians with military tanks.

Sixty-two-year-old Jamal Hamdi Hassan Ashour was one such victim. He was deliberately run over in Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun neighborhood on 29 February after he was arrested. The father of five was subjected to harsh interrogation by members of the Israeli army, who bound his hands with plastic zip-tie handcuffs before running him over with a military vehicle from the bottom to the top of his body.

Euro-Med Monitor has also documented numerous incidents of Israeli army tanks destroying civilian property, particularly cars, during Israel’s ground incursions into different parts of the Gaza Strip.

Most of these tank attacks have targeted vehicles with no evident military connection, parked in the streets, demonstrating the Israeli army’s deliberate and systematic destruction of Palestinian property.

“These violations are part of a larger Israeli effort to dehumanize every Palestinian in the Gaza Strip, apparently in an attempt to justify and normalize the crimes being committed against them. Crushing civilians with tanks is just one of the many brutal ways the Israeli army murders Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, denying their humanity, suffering, and dignity,” said Euro-Med Monitor.

The rights group added that “these practices reflect the intention of Israel’s government and military to collectively punish the Palestinian people, with the aim of eliminating, intimidating, and/or harming them physically and psychologically.”

“These crimes come in tandem with a public incitement campaign by Israeli officials, media figures, and settlers calling for the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza, and are committed with total impunity by the perpetrators—which is evident in the absence of any meaningful action by the Israeli government or military at any level to hold the perpetrators accountable.”