“The Israeli army arrested me in the northern Gaza Strip and took me to a gathering place for soldiers. They put a camera on my head, strapped explosives around my waist, and asked me to enter a residential apartment and quickly return to their gathering place.” This is how the Israeli occupation army used the young Omar Ashour as a human shield during its battles with Hamas fighters.

Ashour, 34, was forced to comply with all the demands of the Israeli soldiers to preserve his life and avoid being killed, which led him to enter the residential apartment in the northern Gaza Strip and wander through its rooms in search of militants.

Ashour describes the details of what happened when the army asked him to enter the apartment: “I was forced to move and execute their orders, and I lied through moments of sheer terror, with the thought of the soldiers detonating my body at any moment, so I walked slowly and did not know how my body carried me to this apartment.”

Ashour was released two weeks after his arrest, and was left at the gate of the Karam Abou Salem commercial crossing, southeast of the city of Rafah, wearing light clothes and barefoot. He was forced to walk nearly two kilometers deep into the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian Human Shields

Ashour is one of dozens of detainees used by the Israeli army during its ongoing war on the Gaza Strip. The army is placing Palestinian civilians in front of military targets and exposing their lives to danger, according to testimonies collected by the report’s author.

Inside the residential city of Hamad, north of the city of Khan Yunis, the Israeli army detained the Barakat family inside a residential apartment in the city’s towers, using them as human shields during the fighting.

After the family left the city following the Israeli army’s withdrawal, the daughter Banan, 21, spoke about the days of terror her family experienced while they were in the apartment with the soldiers.

“They put me with my parents and my three sisters in one room and closed the door on us, and they were firing from inside the apartment’s windows, and I expected our death at any time, either through execution at their hands or from a shell falling on us from Hamas,” said Banan. 

Banan and her family stayed in the apartment for three days with the soldiers who exploited them to achieve military goals, and the soldiers, according to Banan, provided them with little water and some food like biscuits during their time in the apartment.

Banan’s family left the apartment after the Israeli army withdrew on Wednesday, March 13, and they arrived at the Mawasi area in the city of Khan Yunis, walking on foot for a distance of one kilometer.

Booby-Trapping Palestinians

The Israeli army arrested the 30-year old Hakim in the northern Gaza Strip and rigged him with large quantities of explosives, tying him with a rope around his waist, while placing a camera on his head, only to lower him through one of the tunnel openings.

In a Facebook post, Hakim documents what happened to him and his use as a human shield by being pushed 40 meters inside one of the tunnels in the Gaza Strip.

“They stripped me of my clothes and placed explosives around my torso with a camera and tied me with a harness, and the soldier said to me, ‘I will make him like a bride now.’ Then they dragged me into a tunnel opening with force, and asked me to move inside it, and they wanted to blow me up as soon as they saw a resistance fighter inside the tunnel,” said Hakim.

Minutes later, the soldiers pulled Hakim out of the tunnel, removed the explosives from his body, then the present soldier asked to bring someone younger than him to have more freedom of movement.

A New War Crime

The investigations coordinator at the Independent Commission for Human Rights, Bakr al-Turkmani, confirmed that the Israeli army committed many crimes during its war on Gaza, including “genocide, and crimes related to the use of civilians as human shields, which are violations included in international humanitarian law and international human rights law.”

“The Independent Commission and other human rights organizations have documented many of the practices carried out by the Israeli occupation, related to the use of civilians as human shields, whether during the raid of medical complexes or homes, where citizens were used by tying cameras on their heads and dragging them remotely towards specific places for examination,” added Turkmani.

Al-Turkmani explained that the Geneva Convention obliges Israel to transfer detainees to safe areas, but the Israeli army kept some detainees in combat zones for four days, which constitutes another use of civilians as human shields.

Al-Turkmani points out that there are some cases in al-Shifa Complex where the Israeli army obliged some detainees to enter the basements of the complex, go into sewage spaces, and put them inside armored vehicles during combat, in addition to civilians placed on the tank body.

Do Not Touch Human Lives!

International law and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 prohibit the use of civilians as human shields. The former International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Rome Statute also consider the use of human shields a war crime.

Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem confirms that the Israeli army has used Palestinians as human shields over the years, as part of its official policy, and ordered them to carry out military operations fraught with real risks to their lives.

The organization stated in statements published on its website that “the Israeli army forced Palestinian citizens to remove suspicious objects from the street; to call on Palestinians wanted for arrest to leave their homes for arrest; to stand behind barriers behind which soldiers hide while firing, and other actions”.

B’Tselem explains that in 2005, the Israeli Supreme Court decided to prohibit the use of Palestinian citizens within the framework of military operations, but the soldiers continued to use them as human shields from time to time, especially during military campaigns, and in most cases, no one was held accountable for that.

According to the organization, the Israeli army responded to the court’s decision by stating that it had stopped using Palestinian citizens as human shields and that it only “relies on civilians to prevent touching human lives.”

B’Tselem has previously documented the same practice according to testimonies of Israeli soldiers during the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip in 2014, who indicated that they used Palestinians as human shields. The organization also confirmed that none of them had been prosecuted.

Similarly, Amnesty International and Israeli organization Breaking the Silence accused the Israeli army of using civilians, including children, as human shields to protect its elements during incursions into the Gaza Strip, and also to walk in front of military vehicles when raiding a house believed to be booby-trapped.

The United Nations Human Rights Council previously accused Israel of “continuing to use Palestinian children as human shields and forcing them to work as guides.”