Israeli soldier says every unit ‘keeps a Palestinian as human shield’

The use of Palestinian civilians as human shields has been an Israeli army policy during its war on Gaza, according to the testimony of a senior officer in a non-reservist brigade.

“In Gaza, human shields are used by Israeli soldiers at least six times a day,” the officer, who says he served with the Israeli army for nine months, wrote anonymously for Haaretz on Sunday.

According to the article, Israeli soldiers routinely force Palestinian civilians to enter Gaza homes ahead of military operations to ensure that no explosives or combatants are there.

This procedure is known with the codename “mosquito protocol”, which the officer first came across in December 2023, two months after Israel launched its devastating onslaught on Gaza.

The Israeli army normally uses dogs for these missions, the officer wrote, and there had not been a shortage of dogs at the time the use of Palestinian human shields first became known to the officer.

The officer added that the lack of dogs was the “unofficial excuse” for the prodecure. 

The use of Palestinian human shields has become systematically used, and the individuals used in these procedures are referred to internally as “shawish”, the officer said.

“Today, almost every platoon keeps a ‘shawish,’ and no infantry force enters a house before a ‘shawish’ clears it,” he wrote. “This means there are four ‘shawishes’ in a company, twelve in a battalion, and at least 36 in a brigade. We operate a sub-army of slaves.”

‘I thought I was hallucinating’

The use of civilians as human shields is strictly prohibited under international humaitarian law and constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. 

The Israeli army last month launched six investigations into widely reported allegations that its soldiers use Palestinians as human shields. 

The officer downplayed the seriousness of the Israeli investigation, saying that a serious effort would include “far more than a thousand investigations”.

He said that he attended a meeting where a brigade commander presented the use of human shields as a “necessary operational achievement to accomplish the mission”.

“It was so normalised that I thought I was hallucinating,” he wrote.

He referred to statements by a senior source to Haaretz in August 2024 that Israeli military commanders were aware of the procedure. 

“I don’t know which is worse: that they don’t know what’s going on in the army they command, or that they do know and continue regardless.”

Despite multiple reports by Haaretz, the use of human shields has become increasingly “widespread and normalised”, he added.

Instead of stopping the procedure, a high-ranking member of the Israeli armed forces continued to condone the use of human shields and even present it as “an operational necessity”, he said.

Yet, the officer wrote that it was not necessary to use human shields while entering houses in Gaza. Instead, the army could’ve used robots, drones or dogs to achieve the same objective. 

“In other words, we forced Palestinians to act as human shields not because it was safer for IDF troops, but because it was faster,” he said, using the acronym for the military.

“That’s why we risked the lives of Palestinians who were suspected of nothing other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Some soldiers, incuding the writer, resisted the procedure, he said.

“That’s what happens when you’re in an unending war that fails to bring the hostages back alive month after month. You lose moral judgment.”

The officer concluded by saying that he has no hope that the army would investigate itself the use of human shields.

“Only an independent State Commission of Inquiry could get to the bottom of this,” he wrote.

“Until then, we have every reason to worry about international courts in the Hague, because this procedure is a crime – a crime even the army now admits. It happens daily and is much more common than the public is being told.”

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