The Israeli army forced Palestinians into potentially booby-trapped homes and tunnels in Gaza to avoid putting its troops in danger, according to an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier and five former detainees who said they were victims of the practice.
The soldier, who said his unit held two Palestinian prisoners with the explicit purpose of using them as human shields to probe dangerous places, said the practice was prevalent among Israeli units in Gaza.
“We told them to get into the building before us,” he explained. “If there are traps, they will explode and not us.”
It was so common in the Israeli army that it had a name: “mosquito protocol”.
The exact scale and scope of the practice by the Israeli army is not known. But the testimony of the soldier and five civilians shows that it was widespread throughout the territory: in northern Gaza, Gaza City, Khan Younis and Rafah.
The soldier explained that, at first, his unit, which was in northern Gaza at the time, used standard procedures before entering a suspicious building: sending in a dog or blowing a hole in the side with a tank shell or an armored bulldozer.
But one day this spring, the soldier said an intelligence officer showed up with two Palestinian detainees — a 16-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man — and told troops to use them as human shields before entering the buildings. The intelligence officer claimed they were connected to Hamas.
When he questioned the practice, the soldier said one of his commanders told him: “It is better for the Palestinians to explode and not our soldiers.”
“It’s quite shocking, but after a few months in Gaza you [tende a não] think clearly,” said the soldier. “You’re just tired. Obviously, I prefer my soldiers to live. But, you know, that’s not how the world works.”
The soldier said he and his comrades refused to continue with the practice after two days and confronted their senior commander about it. Their commander, who first told them not to “think about international law,” saying their own lives were “more important,” finally relented, releasing the two Palestinians, the soldier said.
The fact that they were released, he said, made it clear to him that they had no affiliation with Hamas, “that they are not terrorists.”
THE CNN was connected to the soldier by Breaking the Silence, an organization that provides a forum for Israeli soldiers to speak out and verify their testimony.
Breaking the Silence provided the CNN three photos depicting the Israeli military using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza. A chilling photograph shows two soldiers urging a civilian to advance at a scene of devastation in northern Gaza. In a second, two civilians used as human shields sit tied up and blindfolded. A third shows a soldier protecting a tied-up civilian.
In a statement, the Israeli army told CNN : “IDF guidelines and directives strictly prohibit the use of civilians detained in Gaza for military operations. Relevant protocols and instructions are routinely made clear to soldiers in the field during conflict.”
International law prohibits the use of civilians to protect military activities or forcibly involving civilians in military operations. The Israeli Supreme Court explicitly banned the practice in 2005 after human rights groups filed a complaint about the military’s use of Palestinian civilians to knock on the doors of suspected militants in the West Bank. Judge Aharon Barak at the time called the practice “cruel and barbaric.”
Israel has long accused Hamas of using civilians in Gaza as human shields, embedding military infrastructure in civilian areas — allegations Hamas has denied. There is ample evidence of this: weapons located inside homes, tunnels dug under residential neighborhoods, and rockets fired from those same neighborhoods into densely populated territory.
The Israeli military often cites these practices when blaming Hamas for the extraordinary number of civilian deaths in Gaza, where Israel dropped bombs on these same residential areas. Israeli strikes have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October last year, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The United Nations says most of the deaths are civilians.
“We saw Hamas using Palestinians as human shields,” the soldier said. “But for me it is more painful with my own army. Hamas is a terrorist organization. The IDF should not use practices from terrorist organizations.”
‘Mosquito Protocol’
Interviews with five former Palestinian detainees in Gaza coincide with the soldier’s account. All describe being captured by Israeli troops and forced into potentially dangerous places before the military.
Israeli airstrikes earlier this year forced Mohammad Saad, 20, to leave his home in Jabalya in northern Gaza. From his makeshift home near Khan Younis, among blankets hanging from rafters, Saad explained that he was caught by the Israeli military near Rafah while trying to get food aid for himself and his younger brothers.
“The army took us in a jeep, and we found ourselves inside Rafah in a military camp,” he said, adding that he was trapped there for 47 days, and during that time it was used for reconnaissance missions to avoid putting Israeli soldiers at risk. .
“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 rug,’ saying they were looking for tunnels. ‘Film under the stairs,’ they said. If they found something, they told us to take it outside. For example, they asked us to remove belongings from the house, clean here, move the couch, open the refrigerator and open the closet.”
The soldiers were terrified, he explained, of hidden explosives.
“I usually wore my military uniform, but for the final mission, they took me in civilian clothes,” Saad said. “We went to a location, and they told me I had to film a tank left behind by the Israeli army. I was terrified and scared to film, so they hit me in the back with the butt of a rifle.”
Bullets rang out as he approached the tank, and Saad said he was shot in the back. Miraculously, he survived and was taken to Soroka Medical Center in Israel. When he was interviewed by CNN two weeks later at Khan Younis, he lifted his shirt to show the wound where the bullet entered his back.
Not all of the Palestinians used were adults. Mohammad Shbeir, 17, said he was taken captive by Israeli soldiers after they killed his father and sister during an attack on their home in Khan Younis.
“I was handcuffed and wearing just my underwear,” he recalled. “They used me as a human shield, taking me to demolished houses, places that could be dangerous or contain landmines.”
Dr. Yahya Khalil Al-Kayali, 59, was like so many others repeatedly displaced after being forced to leave his home in Gaza City. He ended up taking shelter near Al Shifa Hospital, once Gaza’s largest medical complex, joining thousands of internally displaced civilians who camped there.
In March, the Israeli military besieged the medical complex for the third time, alleging that Hamas was using it as a command center — something Hamas denied. A large number of men were captured in the two-week attack, which left the hospital destroyed and inoperable. Al-Kayali was among them.
“The leader of this group, the soldier, asked me to come,” Al-Kayali recalled from the Mawasi area of Khan Younis, near a beach tent camp. “He was speaking to me in English. And asked me to leave the building to find open holes or tunnels underground.”
Along a row of apartment buildings, soldiers repeatedly told Al-Kayali to enter every room of each apartment and check for militants and booby traps. Israeli tank guns were ready to fire, he said, in case the Hamas fighters were discovered.
“I was thinking I was going to be killed or die within minutes,” he recalled. “I was thinking about my family. Because there is no time to think about many things. But I was also worried about my children, because my children and my family were in the building.”
To his relief, the buildings were empty and he was released. In the end, he said, he was forced to check as many as 80 apartments.
All Palestinians interviewed by CNN were eventually released after being used as human shields, and the soldier said those detained by his unit were also released.
But after the soldier left Gaza, he said he heard from his comrades that the so-called “mosquito protocol” had been resumed in his unit.
“My own soldiers who refused at first started using this practice again,” he said. “They don’t have as much strength as they did in the beginning.”
This content was originally published in Israel used Palestinians as human shields, soldiers and former detainees say on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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