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The Israeli military has forced Palestinians to enter potentially booby-trapped houses and tunnels in Gaza to avoid putting its troops in harm’s way, according to an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier and five former detainees who said they were victims of the practice.
The soldier, who said his unit held two Palestinian prisoners for the explicit purpose of using them as human shields to probe dangerous places, said the practice was prevalent among Israeli units in Gaza.
“We told them to enter the building before us,” he explained. “If there are any booby traps, they will explode and not us.”
It was so common in the Israeli military that it had a name: “mosquito protocol.”
The exact scale and scope of the practice by the Israeli military is not known. But the testimony of both the soldier and five civilians shows that it was widespread across the territory: in northern Gaza, Gaza City, Khan Younis, and Rafah.
The soldier explained that, at first, his unit, which at the time was in northern Gaza, used standardized procedures before entering a suspect building: sending in a dog or punching a hole through its side with a tank shell or an armored bulldozer.
But one day this spring, the soldier said an intelligence officer showed up with two Palestinian detainees – a 16-year-old boy and 20-year-old man – and told the troops to use them as human shields before entering buildings. The intelligence officer claimed they were connected to Hamas.
When he questioned the practice, the soldier said one of his commanders told him, “‘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 that he and his comrades refused to carry on with the practice after two days and confronted their senior commander about it. Their commander, who first told them not to “think about international law,” saying that their own lives were “more important,” ultimately relented, releasing the two Palestinians, the soldier said.
The fact that they were released, he said, made it clear to him that they had no affiliation with Hamas, “that they are not terrorists.”
International law forbids the use of civilians to shield military activity, or to forcibly involve civilians in military operations. The Israeli Supreme Court explicitly banned the practice in 2005, after rights groups filed a complaint about the military’s use of Palestinian civilians to knock on the doors of suspected militants in the West Bank. Justice Aharon Barak at the time called the practice “cruel and barbaric.”
Israel has long accused Hamas of using civilians in Gaza as human shields, embedding military infrastructure in civilian areas – allegations Hamas has denied. There is ample evidence for it: weapons located inside homes, tunnels dug beneath residential neighborhoods and rockets fired from those same neighborhoods in the densely packed territory.
The Israeli military frequently cites those practices in blaming Hamas for the extraordinary civilian death toll in Gaza, where Israel has dropped bombs on those same residential areas. Israeli attacks have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October last year, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The United Nations says that most of the dead are civilians.
“We saw Hamas using Palestinians as human shields,” the soldier said. “But for me it’s more painful with my own army. Hamas is a terrorist organization. The IDF shouldn’t use terrorist organization practices.”
‘Mosquito protocol’
Interviews with five Palestinian former detainees in Gaza tally with the soldier’s account. All describe being captured by Israeli troops and forced to enter potentially dangerous places ahead of the military.
Israeli airstrikes earlier this year forced Mohammad Saad, 20, from his home in Jabalya, in northern Gaza. From his makeshift home near Khan Younis, between blankets strung from rafters, Saad explained that he was picked up by the Israeli military near Rafah, while attempting to get food aid for him and his younger brothers.
“The army took us in a jeep, and we found ourselves inside Rafah in a military camp,” he said, adding that he was held there for 47 days, and during that time was used for reconnaissance missions to avoid putting Israeli soldiers at risk.
“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.”
The soldiers were terrified, he explained, of hidden explosives.
“I usually wore the military uniform, but for the final mission, they took me in civilian clothing,” Saad said. “We went to a location, and they told me I had to film a tank left behind by the Israeli army. I was terrified and scared to film it, so they hit me on the back with the butt of a rifle.”
Not all the Palestinians used were adults. Mohammad Shbeir, 17, said that he was taken captive by Israeli soldiers after they killed his father and sister during a raid on their home in Khan Younis.
“I was handcuffed and wearing nothing but my boxers,” he recalled. “They used me as a human shield, taking me into demolished houses, places that could be dangerous or contain landmines.”
Dr. Yahya Khalil Al-Kayali, 59, was like so many others displaced over and over after being forced from his home in Gaza City. He eventually found himself living near Al Shifa Hospital, once Gaza’s largest medical complex, joining thousands of internally displaced civilians who took up shelter there.
In March, the Israeli military laid siege to that medical complex for a third time, alleging that Hamas was using it as a command center – something that Hamas denied. Huge numbers of men were swept up in the two-week-long raid, which left the hospital destroyed and inoperable. Al-Kayali was among them.
“The leader of this group, the soldier, asked me to come,” Al-Kayali recalled from the Mawasi area of Khan Younis, by a beach tent encampment. “He was talking to me in English. And he asked me to go out of the building to find any open holes or tunnels under the ground.”
Along a row of apartment buildings, again and again, the soldiers told Al-Kayali to enter every room of every apartment and check for militants and booby traps. The canons of Israeli tanks stood ready to fire, he said, should Hamas fighters be uncovered.
“I was thinking that I would be killed or die within minutes,” he recalled. “I was thinking about my family. Because there is no time to think about many things. But I was worried also about my kids, because my kids and my family were in the building.”
To his relief, the buildings were empty, and he was released. In the end, he said, he was forced to check as many as 80 apartments.
But after the soldier left Gaza, he said he heard from his comrades that the so-called “mosquito protocol” had resumed in his unit.
“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.”
Tareq Al Hilou and Mohammad Al Sawalhi in Gaza contributed to this report.