The US gathered intelligence last year of Israeli officials discussing their soldiers using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza by sending them into tunnels and buildings believed to be lined with explosives, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing two US officials.
The officials said that the intelligence was shared with the White House during the final weeks of the Biden administration. Despite the use of human shields being a clear war crime and violation of international law, Biden officials did nothing to curtail US military aid to Israel after receiving the intelligence.
The IDF’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, known as the “mosquito protocol,” was so widespread in Gaza that one Israeli military officer writing anonymously in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said that the IDF operated a “sub-army of Palestinian slaves.”
While the IDF officially denies that it used human shields, there has been widespread reporting on it in Israeli media and testimony from Israeli soldiers and Palestinians about the practice.
“You send the human shield underground. As he walks down the tunnel, he maps it all for you. He has an iPhone in his vest and as he walks it sends back GPS information,” Daniel, an Israeli tank commander, said in a documentary titled “Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War” that broadcast on the UK’s ITV this week.
“The commanders saw how it works. And the practice spread like wildfire. After about a week, every company was operating its own mosquito,” Daniel added.
In one case, Israeli soldiers tied an explosive around the neck of an 80-year-old Palestinian man to force him to act as a human shield, threatening to blow his head off if he tried to run away. Once he served his purpose, the man and his wife were told to evacuate the area and were shot and killed by Israeli troops when they tried to flee.
Mohammed Shubeir, a 17-year-old Palestinian boy, spoke to The New York Times last year about his experience being used as a human shield in Khan Younis. “The soldiers sent me like a dog to a booby-trapped apartment,” he said. “I thought these would be the last moments of my life.”
