Israel using Palestinian detainees as human shields in Gaza: Report

WASHINGTON

Israel has used Palestinians as human shields in the besieged Gaza Strip, forcing detainees into potentially booby-trapped buildings and tunnels to avoid casualties among its ranks, according to a report published Thursday.

The CNN report is based on testimonies from an Israeli soldier and five former detainees. The soldier said the practice was widespread among Israeli units operating in Gaza, and acknowledged his unit detained two Palestinians for the explicit purpose of using them as human shields.

“We told them to enter the building before us,” he said. “If there are any booby traps, they will explode and not us.”

The practice is so commonplace that Israeli forces pejoratively call it the "mosquito protocol." But CNN said the extent that the practice is employed is not firmly understood, but has taken place in northern Gaza, Gaza City, Khan Younis and Rafah.

The soldier told the news network that in the spring an Israeli intelligence officer came to his unit with two Palestinians -- a 16-year-old boy and a 20-year-old -- and instructed the soldiers to use them as human shields, claiming they were somehow connected to Hamas. When the soldier questioned the directive, the officer replied, “It’s better that the Palestinian will explode and not our soldiers.”

"It’s quite shocking, but after a few months in Gaza you [tend not to] think clearly," the soldier said. "You’re just tired. Obviously, I prefer that my soldiers live. But, you know, that’s not how the world works."

The soldier said he and other members of his unit complained to a senior officer who first instructed them not to “think about international law,” before he eventually acquiesced and freed the two Palestinians.

Their release, the soldier said, showed that they were not affiliated with the Palestinian group, and “that they are not terrorists.”

Israel has repeatedly alleged that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields, claiming the practice justifies airstrikes that have inflicted widespread carnage among Gaza's civilian population.

In the more than one year since Israel began its onslaught following a Hamas-led cross-border attack, over 42,800 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Gaza. Some 1,200 people were killed in Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 raid, and 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages.

One of the former Palestinian detainees used by Israeli forces as human shields told CNN that he was apprehended by Israel while he was attempting to get food aid for his family after being displaced from his home in Jabaliya by airstrikes.

He was transferred to an Israeli military facility where he was held for 47 days and was regularly forced into conducting reconnaissance missions to keep Israeli troops, who were horrified of improvised explosives, out of harm's way.

“They dressed us in military uniforms, put a camera on us, and gave us a metal cutter,” he said. “They would ask us to do things like, ‘move this carpet,’ saying they were looking for tunnels. ‘Film under the stairs,’ they would say. If they found something, they would tell us to bring it outside. For example, they would ask us to remove belongings from the house, clean here, move the sofa, open the fridge, and open the cupboard.”

Mohammad Shbeir, 17, said after being abducted by Israeli forces from his home in Khan Younis, he was used to clear demolished houses and areas that could have been booby-trapped with explosives or posed other dangers.

Another 59-year-old man recalled being used to clear up to 80 apartments after being detained from the al-Shifa medical complex, once the coastal enclave's premier health care facility before Israel reduced it to rubble.

Israel claimed the facility was being used as a Hamas command and control center -- false allegations that were never corroborated despite Israel occupying the site twice.

The soldier said that the "mosquito protocol" was reinstated within his unit after he left.

“My own soldiers who refused it in the beginning were back to using this practice,” he said. “They have no strength like they had in the beginning.”