08/14/2024 – 18:42
Fearing booby traps, commanders have reportedly sent Palestinian civilians into tunnels and buildings as scouts, soldiers told the Israeli daily Haaretz. The army denies the practice, which is considered a war crime. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been accused of using Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip as human shields, forcing them to act as scouts for soldiers, entering tunnels and buildings before them to neutralize potential booby traps, according to a report published Tuesday (13/08) by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The report is based on testimonies from IDF members who claim to have witnessed the practice and on videos published by the Qatari state broadcaster Al Jazeera, which is banned in Israel for “risking national security”.
According to one of the sources cited in the text, the practice – considered a war crime under international law – was known to the highest echelons of the Israeli Army, including the Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi.
Teenagers and elderly people would also have been used
According to Haaretz, the Palestinians were detained by soldiers dressed in Israeli military gear and equipped with cameras and sent to tunnels and buried in rubble. The practice was justified by commanders who claimed it was better for a Palestinian civilian to die in an explosion than an Israeli soldier.
Teenagers and elderly people were also reportedly “recruited” for these “missions”.
The sources claim that these civilians were not suspected terrorists, but were arrested specifically for this purpose and released after a day or two or even a week. But the soldiers would sometimes only learn that they were innocent civilians later.
What the Israeli Army says
The Israeli military denies the allegations and says it prohibits the use of civilians in Gaza “for military missions that pose a deliberate risk to their lives.” It also says the suspected misconduct “has been forwarded to the relevant authorities for review.”
The International Criminal Court (ICC) prohibits “the use of the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations.”
Since the beginning of the war against Hamas, which began after the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, Tel Aviv has repeatedly accused the fundamentalist group that controls the Gaza Strip of hiding behind Palestinian civilians and deliberately sacrificing them in the name of continuing the conflict.
Also speaking to Haaretz, a US diplomatic spokesperson said that scenes such as the one in an Al Jazeera video showing the IDF using Palestinian civilians as human shields do not reflect the values of the Israeli army.
Similar allegations have been made in the past
As reported by the Israeli press, in 2002 the country’s Supreme Court had banned in a preliminary ruling the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields in operations. The ban was reinforced in a 2005 judgment, following an initiative by Israeli human rights groups.
In 2010, an Israeli military court convicted two soldiers of using a nine-year-old Palestinian child as a human shield, forcing him to search Palestinian prisoners’ bags for explosives during the 2008-2009 Gaza war, which lasted 22 days. Despite the conviction, the soldiers received suspended sentences and did not serve any prison time.
The war in the Gaza Strip has been going on for almost ten months. It was triggered by the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, which, according to Israeli figures, left around 1,200 people dead and resulted in the kidnapping of another 251 – of whom 111 are believed to remain in Gaza.
In response, Israel has launched massive military operations in the Gaza Strip, which, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry, have left more than 39,000 dead. Although authorities in Gaza do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, Israel claims to have killed about 15,000 in fighting inside the Gaza Strip, in addition to another 1,000 terrorists who were inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
In addition to Israel, several other countries, such as the United States and members of the European Union, consider Hamas a terrorist organization.
ra (KNA, ots)
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