Gaza (Quds News Network)- An Israeli commander reportedly shot and killed a Palestinian who was used as a human shield by Israeli forces in Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip.
According to a report published by “The Hottest Place in Hell,” the Palestinian man who was forced to serve as a human shield and search buildings in the Khan Yunis area, had received the Israeli forces’ permission to be present in the building.
However, when the commander from the Nahal Brigade arrived, he identified the man as Palestinian, took out a rifle and shot him to death, not knowing the Palestinian man was authorized to be present in the building.
According to the report published on the Hebrew-language independent investigative journalism website, the Israeli forces confirmed the details of the incident and claimed that “the incident was investigated by the brigade commander, and the findings have been implemented during troops’ current operations.”
The Hottest Place in Hell noted that some Palestinians used in these tactics are either threatened with getting killed or blackmailed into carrying out the army’s orders.
Moreover, individuals forced to participate in these operations are sometimes used due to a “shortage of sniffer dogs trained to detect explosives”.
The Israeli forces have been previously accused by human rights organisations and news reports of using Palestinians as human shields in numerous operations across Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
In August, Haaretz reported that Palestinians have been used by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip as human shields for soldiers during operations.
The Palestinians, whom the soldiers call shawish – an obscure Arabic word of Turkish origin meaning sergeant – are sent into buildings to conduct searches before Israeli soldiers enter the premises.
“Our lives are more important than their lives,” soldiers were told. “The thinking is that it’s better for the Israeli soldiers to remain alive and for the shawishim to be the ones blown up by an explosive device.”
In late October, CNN reported that Palestinians, among them teenagers, were said to have been forced to serve as human shields in Gaza. According to the report, the use of Palestinians as human shields has become known as “mosquito protocol” among Israeli soldiers.
The use of Palestinians as human shields didn’t begin on October 7. During Operation Defensive Shield, conducted in 2002 in the West Bank, the Israeli forces utilized the so-called “neighbor protocol,” in which soldiers used civilians to search homes for booby traps or sent Palestinians into homes ahead of Israeli forces to locate wanted individuals.
International law forbids the use of civilians to shield military activity, or to forcibly involve civilians in military operations.
After numerous stories on the issue were published, human rights groups petitioned Israel’s top court to stop the practice. The court accepted the petition in 2005 and ruled that the practice is against international law and is therefore illegal.
However, the practice seems to have returned more than 20 years later.
Nadav Weiman, a former Israeli sniper and now BTS director, said: “From what we understand it was a very widely used protocol, meaning there are hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza who have been used as human shields.
“Palestinians are being grabbed from humanitarian corridors inside Gaza … and then they’re being brought to different units inside Gaza – regular infantry units, not special forces.” Weiman said.
“And then those Palestinians are being used as human shields to sweep tunnels and also houses. In some cases, they have a GoPro camera on their chest or on their head and in almost all of the cases, they are cuffed before they are taken into a tunnel or house to sweep and they are dressed in IDF uniform.”
Bill van Esveld, Human Right Watch’s associate director for children’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa, said: “There is this repeated history of well documented accounts by UN bodies, as well as by human rights groups, and indications of Israeli awareness of the problem, but no action.”
“It’s no surprise that this longstanding problem would persist.”