An investigation conducted by the New York Times revealed that throughout the war in the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers and Israeli intelligence agents used to force Palestinian prisoners to perform life-threatening reconnaissance missions to avoid exposing Israeli soldiers to danger on the battlefield.
Although the size and scope of these missions is unknown, the American newspaper considers them an illegal practice under “Israeli and international” laws, and there are 11 Israeli military divisions that use these methods in 5 cities in the besieged Strip, and officers from the intelligence services are often involved in them.
According to the investigation conducted by three of the newspaper’s correspondents from its office in occupied Jerusalem, the Palestinian detainees were forced to explore and photograph places in Gaza, where the Israeli army believes that fighters of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) have prepared an ambush or a decoy, and where they are still hiding. This practice has gradually spread since the beginning of the war in October last year.
Major international newspapers, including the British Guardian, as well as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, published similar reports indicating the Israeli occupation army’s use of Palestinians as human shields.
Buildings planted with mines
The New York Times report stated that Palestinian prisoners entered buildings planted with mines to find hidden explosives. They have been asked to pick up or move items such as electric generators and water tanks that Israeli soldiers fear conceal tunnel entrances or booby traps.
The newspaper’s correspondents met with 7 Israeli soldiers who witnessed or participated in this practice, and they described it as routine, familiar, and organized, and carried out with great logistical support and the knowledge of military commanders on the battlefield.
Many of them said that officers from the Israeli intelligence services often transfer Palestinian prisoners between military divisions through a process that requires coordination between the battalions and the knowledge of senior field commanders.
The American newspaper also interviewed eight soldiers and other officials familiar with this practice, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.
Confirmation from a former intelligence chief
The New York Times quoted Major General Tamir Hayman – a former head of military intelligence who receives periodic briefings on the progress of military operations from senior officials in the army and the Ministry of Defense – as confirming that some detainees were forced to enter the tunnels, while others volunteered to accompany the forces and act as their guides, in the hope of gaining favor. With the army. Three Palestinians gave recorded testimonies about their use as human shields.
The newspaper reported that it did not find any evidence that any of the detainees were harmed or killed while being used as human shields. But she said that an Israeli officer was shot dead after a detainee was sent to search a building because he either did not find a fighter hiding there or did not report the fighter.
Like a dog
It was reported that a Palestinian high school student named Muhammad Shabir (17 years old) was found by Israeli soldiers hiding with his family in early March, and they detained him for approximately 10 days before releasing him without bringing a charge against him.
Shabir said that the soldiers used him as a human shield during his detention, adding that he was forced to walk handcuffed through the rubble of his empty town of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, searching for explosives placed by Hamas.
He added that the soldiers forced him to walk forward so as not to be exposed to any explosion, and sent him “like a dog to a bomb-laden apartment,” as he put it. “I thought it would be the last moments of my life,” he said.
Shabir – who the newspaper indicated was previously interviewed by Tel Aviv Tribune – continued that he was ordered to search among the rubble for the entrances to the tunnels near one of the neighborhood schools. He said he was sent into apartment buildings, with the small drone hovering a yard or two from his head. He was asked to search for the bodies of the militants, which Israelis usually fear could be booby-trapped.
He walks around in an Israeli military uniform
The Palestinian student said that a few days before his release, soldiers untied him and forced him to wear an Israeli military uniform. Then they released him and asked him to wander the streets so that Hamas fighters could shoot him and reveal their locations, he said. The Israelis were following him from a distance, out of sight.
The New York Times pointed out in its journalistic investigation that the Israeli army followed a similar approach in dealing with the Palestinians known as the “neighbor procedure” in Gaza and the West Bank in the early 2000s, where soldiers forced Palestinian civilians to approach the homes of militants to persuade them to surrender.
But the Israeli Supreme Court banned this procedure in 2005, according to the investigation.
The newspaper quoted Professor Michael N. Schmitt, a researcher at the US Military Academy West Point, said that he did not know that any other army in the world had used civilians, prisoners of war, or “captured terrorists” in life-threatening reconnaissance missions in recent decades. However, military historians say that the US Army used this practice in Vietnam.
Schmidt said that these practices constitute “in most cases a war crime.”
Blatant racism
Two Israeli soldiers revealed that they were told that the lives of “terrorists” were less valuable than the lives of Israelis, even though officers often concluded that detainees did not belong to terrorist groups and later released them without charges, according to an Israeli soldier and the three Palestinians who spoke. To the New York Times.
In one case, the newspaper attributed a Palestinian graphic designer named Jihad Siam (31 years old), who was among a crowd of displaced Palestinians, to say that members of an Israeli military squad forced them to walk forward to take cover as they advanced towards a resistance hideout in central Gaza City.
Siyam added, “The soldiers asked us to move forward so that the other side would not return fire,” pointing out that as soon as the crowd of displaced people reached the hideout, the Israeli soldiers rushed into the hideout. After killing the gunmen inside the building, “the soldiers released the civilians and let them go.”
They took off all his clothes
Among those used as human shields was Bashir Al-Dalu (43 years old), a pharmacist from Gaza City. He said that the soldiers ordered him to take off all of his clothes, even his underwear, then tied his hands and blindfolded him.
After being interrogated about Hamas activities in the area, Al-Dalu said that the soldiers ordered him to enter the backyard of a nearby five-story house. “Three soldiers from behind pushed me violently forward,” Al-Dalu recalls. “They were afraid that there were possible underground tunnels or explosives hidden under anything there.”
He continued that they ordered him, with his hands tied behind his back, to walk around the yard, kicking bricks, coins, and empty boxes. After that, they ordered him to remove the electric generator, thinking that it was hiding the entrance to a tunnel. When he hesitated, one of the soldiers hit him on the back with the butt of his rifle, he says.
Al-Dalu continued his story to the newspaper, saying that something moved from behind an electric generator in the courtyard, then the soldiers began shooting towards the source of the movement, and it later became clear that it was a cat.
