Middle East
Israeli forces used civilians as human shields in Gaza, Palestinians and soldiers say
By
The Washington Post November 3, 2024
Louisa Loveluck, Hajar Harb and John Hudson
The Washington Post November 3, 2024
Israeli reservists stop at a military staging area near the Gaza border in southern Israel on May 21. (Richard Billingham/The Washington Post)
For two weeks in late July and early August, said Mohammed Saad, 20, he and two other Palestinian men were forced by an Israeli army unit in Gaza to enter buildings feared to contain explosives and photograph every inch before troops were given the all clear to enter.
When the soldiers were done with him, he said, someone shot him in the back.
Saad was among four Palestinian men who spoke on the record to provide vivid accounts of what they described as Israel employing detained Palestinians as human shields in Gaza - defined by the Geneva Conventions as using civilians or other detainees to shield military operations from attack - in this case, by forcing them to carry out life-threatening tasks to reduce risk to Israeli soldiers.
Their nearly contemporaneous accounts are detailed, corroborated by other witnesses, and consistent with testimony by an Israeli soldier who fought in Gaza, and with interviews collected by Breaking the Silence, an organization that works with troops who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories. They described a practice in which Palestinians are detained, interrogated and ultimately released, indicating the Israeli army did not believe them to be militants. They described events that took place between January and August.
“This wasn’t something that happened just here and there but rather on a large scale throughout a number of different units, at different times, throughout the war and in different places,” said Joel Carmel, advocacy director of Breaking the Silence, an organization that collects and verifies testimonies from troops who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The IDF did not respond to any of the specific allegations made by the men in this story, but said in a statement that the use of civilians as human shields was prohibited. “The IDF works to address concrete allegations of violations that deviate from the directives and values expected of its soldiers and address them accordingly,” the statement said. The military would not say if any of its forces had been investigated or disciplined for using Palestinians as human shields, or if steps had been taken to eliminate the practice.
Under international law, the use of civilians and other protected people as human shields is a war crime. Israel’s high court has ruled the practice is illegal. On Oct. 16, in response to a New York Times article, State Department spokesman Matt Miller said reports that the Israeli army is using human shields were “incredibly disturbing” and that perpetrators need to be “held accountable,” but did not comment on whether the United States was examining the reports independently. American law requires that the U.S. government suspends military support for Israeli units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.
Washington Post reporters interviewed the four named Palestinians in this story within days or weeks of the events they described. They spoke by phone from Gaza. The Post corroborated elements of Saad’s story through medical records and with a U.S. physician who treated him in Gaza during a follow-up appointment to care for his wounds. Three other Palestinians, who described an incident inside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital complex, spoke to The Post separately and confirmed the presence of one another. The Washington Post was connected with the Israeli soldier through Breaking the Silence, and a reporter interviewed him in person.
Breaking the Silence also provided what it said was visual evidence of the practice. A photograph from northern Gaza shared by the group shows soldiers standing next to two prisoners the group says were being used as human shields. The men sit on the ledge of a blown-out window in a shattered building - wrists tied, eyes covered and heads bowed.
‘Our hands were tied and our eyes were covered’
More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s military operations in Gaza, according to the local Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. The Israeli army says more than 350 soldiers have been killed in its war against Hamas, some by booby traps or ambushes laid by militants in urban areas.
The Israeli soldier, who is in his 20s and served in northern Gaza, recalled the moment his commander brought two Palestinians to him, cuffed and blindfolded, to be used as shields. One was a teenager, he said, the other appeared to be in his 20s. “I asked why we need them,” the soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
He remembers his commander replying that it would be better if the Palestinians were killed by any potential booby traps and that the lives of Israeli soldiers were more important.
For Saad, the ordeal began in June, he said, when he was detained near the Kerem Shalom border crossing, in southern Gaza, where he had been working as a paid guard protecting humanitarian aid from looters. “Without warning, five military jeeps surrounded us,” Saad said. “Our hands were tied and our eyes were covered.”
The soldiers interrogated Saad for several days, he said, before taking him and two other Palestinians to an Israeli army base near an abandoned U.N. warehouse near Rafah, along the Egyptian border. “You are here to perform some tasks for us, ” Saad recalled one of them saying. “You will be in front of us every time we storm a house.”
He said he was given an Israeli military uniform with a camera attached to the helmet. For 14 days, Saad recounted, he was the first one sent into buildings, ordered to film as he went, often with a drone buzzing over his head. The soldiers outside monitored the footage and told him where to go through an earpiece.
“I finished the first mission in about half an hour, and then they asked me to leave,” he said. “I was very afraid because I did not know who was in the house, and I was wearing a military uniform.” If there were militants inside, he thought, “I would surely die.”
He said he was blindfolded and cuffed each morning, then transported to the next location. On the second day, an explosion rocked a building after Saad checked it. The soldiers believed he had misled them on purpose.
“They tied my hands and threw me on the sand,” he said. “They took turns beating me. I still don’t know where the explosion came from.”
Once, Saad said, the captain of the unit showed him a photograph of his destroyed family home in Khan Younis. “If you do not cooperate with us, we will kill all your family members like this,” he recalls the man telling him.
The 15th day was different, he said: He was handed civilian clothes and instructed to start walking. Soon after came the blinding pain in his back.
He remembers waking up in an ambulance, which ferried him across the Israeli border to the Soroka Medical Center in the southern city of Beersheba. It was the first time he had ever left Gaza. He doesn’t know who shot him, or who decided to save his life.
“An unknown man was received by the IDF from Gaza after a gunshot wound,” read the hospital’s medical report, a copy of which was obtained and reviewed by The Post. The physician detailed “extensive pulmonary contusions” and a fractured rib, among other injuries.
Saad said he was still bleeding two days later when he was returned to Gaza in an ambulance and dropped off at Kerem Shalom.
“They told me not to look back,” he said.
International law ‘was not important’
According to accounts provided to Breaking the Silence, Palestinians have been used as human shields throughout the conflict. “The earliest testimony we have on it is from a soldier who was aware of it just a few weeks after the ground invasion began,” Carmel said. “The latest testimony we have on this is from the summer.”
The reservist who spoke with The Post said his unit received two Palestinian men during his tour of Gaza. He recalls questioning whether they were militants and being assured by his commander that they were.
One of the detainees, a teenager, spoke little in the 24 hours he spent with the unit, which the soldier believed was because he was in shock. Blindfolds were removed from the men only when they reached the next building the military had designated for clearance.
The soldier’s recollections line up with the accounts of three Palestinian men interviewed by The Post, all of whom independently described being used by the IDF as human shields over a similar period - in their cases, in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s late March raid on al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Omar al-Jadba, a vascular surgeon, said he was detained by soldiers as they entered the hospital, having stayed behind to look after patients who could not easily be moved. The soldiers assigned him a number, and called it out to summon him to the courtyard. There were other detainees there, including Mohamed al-Sharafa, 48, and Mohamed Hassouna, 24, who said they were taken from their homes near the hospital.
Jadba was ordered to call out through a megaphone that the army had set a deadline for militants to leave the area. The men were told what was expected of them: “To remove any obstacles to the troops, such as curtains and doors” inside the hospital, Hassouna said. “They told us that we should photograph every place we entered and that the pictures would reach them immediately via their wireless internet,” he continued.
Detainees who refused were beaten, the three men said. “I was telling them that my hands are precious for my work, I am the only vascular surgeon here,” Jadba said. “My hospital was turning into rubble, and they were asking me to demolish it with my own hands.”
The men were terrified that they would be mistaken for soldiers and shot by militants, they said, although they encountered none in the end. When the job was done, they called out through the loudspeaker and waited. Eventually, they said, they were allowed to leave, exhausted but relieved, with their hands in the air.
The reservist said a group of soldiers in his unit questioned the use of human shields. One told a more senior commander, he said, that the practice violated international law.
“He told us that international law is not important and the only thing that simple soldiers need to think about is the ethical code of the IDF,” the soldier said.
In its statement to The Post, the Israeli military said: “The use of civilians as human shields, or coercing them in any other way to participate in military operations, is strictly prohibited by the IDF’s orders. These directives and orders are regularly emphasized and clarified to the forces on the ground. The IDF is fully committed to international law.”
Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser at the State Department and now a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, described the soldier’s recollection as “pretty damning evidence for prosecution,” saying his account sounded like “prohibited and indeed criminal human shielding.”
When the reservist asked his commander what to do with the Palestinians once the mission was over, he said he was told to release them.
“At this point we understood that if we could release them, then they were not terrorists,” the reservist said. “The officer just lied to us.”
Palestinians said they have also been forced to enter Hamas’s sprawling network of tunnels ahead of Israeli troops, in case they are booby-trapped. Hakim, whom The Post interviewed in January, described being sent underground in the western part of Gaza City with a camera around his waist and a rope that he was told to pull on if he needed to stop.
“Before I went down there, they asked me if I wanted to say goodbye to any family members,” said Hakim, who spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisals. “I didn’t think there was any need if I was going to return safely,” Hakim recalled telling the soldiers, but a man told him “‘no, you will only return in pieces,’” he said.
At the mouth of the tunnel, Hakim remembered freezing in fear and told the soldiers he couldn’t do it. “One opened fire around my feet, and then pushed me into the hole,” he recounted.
Hakim survived his mission. As the soldiers returned him to their base, inside an abandoned school, he said, he heard them calling a 15-year-old from the detainees gathered there. He was being sent to the tunnels.
Harb reported from London and Hudson from Jerusalem.