The Guardian newspaper reported that three Palestinians testified to it about their use by the Israeli army as human shields against traps and militants from the Islamic Resistance Movement (agitation), noting that this use of Palestinian detainees appeared for the first time in footage broadcast by Al Jazeera last June, July, and August.
The newspaper added in its report that the testimonies it collected are largely consistent with the reports published by Al Jazeera as well as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
It quoted one of the three Palestinians as saying that after they burned his family's home in northern Gaza, Israeli forces separated him from his family, detained him, and told him that they had a specific job for him.
Over the next 11 days in early July, 30-year-old Palestinian Ramez Skafi said he was sent to homes one by one in his area. Al-Shuja'iya Which is monitored by his Israeli military escorts.
According to his account to the newspaper, they turned him into a human shield against booby traps and Hamas gunmen.
Skafi said that he tried to resist being used by them, but they started beating him, and the responsible officer told him that he had no right to make a decision, that he had to do what they wanted, and that his job would be to search the houses and tell them information about their owners, and after intense pressure, they did not leave him any choice.
I was so afraid
The next day, before he went out on patrol with the Israeli soldiers, he said, “I was very afraid because of the tanks in front of me and the planes in the sky above me, and when my companions noticed my fear, they assured me that they (the Israeli soldiers) knew that you were with us.”
According to informants who spoke to the dissident veterans group Breaking the Silence, the practice is widespread, the report said.
The Guardian quoted an investigation conducted by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz last August as testimonies from Israeli soldiers who said that the Palestinians who used shields were known as “shawish,” a word of Turkish origin that means “sergeant.” The soldiers indicated that it was an institutional tactic approved by senior officials. Officers, and a recruit in a combat unit said, “This is done with the knowledge of at least the brigade commander.”
The sergeant's tactic
The newspaper commented that the use of prisoners as human shields constitutes a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions and is explicitly prohibited by Israeli law.
The Israeli army denied that it was using the “shawish” tactic, adding that the reported allegations “were referred for examination by the relevant authorities.”
Skafi said that on several occasions during his detention, he was forced to carry small Quadcopter drones to the homes being searched so that the Israelis could see what was inside them through the cameras built into these drones.
He added that after he finished photographing the interior of the houses and left, they came in and destroyed them, “and every day, after I did what they wanted, they tied my hands and covered my eyes, and only took off the chains when they gave me food or allowed me to go to the bathroom.”
He continued to say that on the sixth day of his use to “clear” homes in Shuja'iya, his captors in the Israeli army came under fire from a Hamas gunman, which led to an exchange of fire and a confrontation that lasted from noon until the evening.
Photographing dead bodies
He explained that during that period they used him as a human shield, “I was in the middle, and they told the resistance fighter: Surrender yourself or we will kill this civilian. In the end, the soldiers succeeded in killing the only Hamas fighter, and they forced me to enter the house that the fighter was using as a sniper position and photograph the corpse with a mobile phone.”
Scafi said the IDF unit employing him was angry with him because the sniper's location was at a house he had been sent to examine earlier in the day, and Scafi was accused of helping to hide the gunman's presence.
Scafi swore that the man was not there when the house was searched, but said that his protests did not protect him from the prolonged beating, which continued until the unit's senior officer came to him after four days of interrogation with a plate of rice, and told him that his story had been proven true.
In Shujaiya
The same officer also told him that the unit's operations in Shuja'iya had ended and he would no longer be needed. On the 11th day of his detention, his shackles were removed, and he was given a bag containing food and water and asked to return home.
Skafi complained to the soldiers that he was too exhausted to carry a heavy package, but they said the bag would identify him as someone who had worked with the Israeli military so that he would not be targeted by Israeli fire as he made his way through Shujaiya to his family.
The Guardian noted that the accounts provided by Skafi and other former Palestinian detainees in… Gaza It generally confirms the accounts given by Israeli soldiers to the media and other activist groups.
The second Palestinian who testified to the Guardian is Ismail Al-Sawalhi, a 30-year-old blacksmith and farmer from Jabalia camp in northern Gaza. He said, “They would take me on missions with them, and send me to the houses in front of them to make sure they were safe, then they would enter behind me, and after they left they would blow up.” the home”.
Al-Sawalhi was arrested near the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south last July, and forced to act as a human shield for an Israeli army unit during 12 days of “clearance” operations in Rafah.
“They protect themselves with us”
Al-Sawalhi added, “The soldiers were protecting themselves from us all the time for fear that the resistance would target them. We were like toys in their hands.”
As for the third Palestinian, he is a 35-year-old young man from Beit Lahia in northern Gaza. He identified himself only as “Abu Saeed” for fear of reprisal, but his identity was verified by the Guardian. He said that he was arrested last February and was used as a shield. Humanly over 4 hours.
He explained, “The Israeli soldiers put a GPS tracking device on my hand and told me: If you try to escape, we will shoot you. We will know where you are. I was asked to knock on the doors of 4 houses and two schools, and to ask people to leave, women and children first, then men.”
He said, “In one of the schools, the situation was very dangerous. I shouted to everyone in the school to leave quietly, but at that moment there was heavy shooting from the Israeli army, and I thought I would die.”
At the end of the day, the tracking device was taken from him, and he was asked to leave the area after being provided with a white flag to wave.
Banned internationally
The Guardian reported that the use of prisoners as human shields is prohibited under Article 28 of the Code Fourth Geneva Conventions.
In 2002, the Israeli Supreme Court issued an injunction prohibiting the Israeli army from using what was known as the “neighborhood procedure,” detaining a Palestinian in a disturbance area, ordering him to knock on the doors of his neighbors and supervising the “clearance” of their homes.
However, the use of human shields continued, and in 2010 two Israeli army personnel were demoted for forcing a 9-year-old Palestinian boy to open a number of bags suspected of containing explosives.
The Guardian quoted Bill Van Esveld, assistant director of the organization Human Rights Watch For the Rights of the Child in the Middle East and North Africa, he said that these stories, well documented by United Nations bodies, occur repeatedly, and there are indications that the Israelis are aware of the problem, but there is no action, and it is not surprising that this long-term problem continues.