Israeli soldiers raid Palestinian homes and buldings as they conduct offensives in the Gaza Strip on August 17, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
Gaza City, February 16 (RHC)-- Israeli forces have tied explosives around the neck of an elderly Palestinian man in the Gaza Strip and forced him to act as a “human shield” before killing him and his wife, according to an investigation by Israeli media.
The Israeli news website HaMakom revealed that the incident took place last May when Israeli soldiers from several different brigades amassed near the house of a Palestinian couple, both in their 80s, in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood.
“Fighters who were with the force at the time of the incident… said that in one of the houses in the neighborhood that the force cleared, an elderly Palestinian couple in their 80s was present,” the report said.
“They said they had nowhere to run, and that they could not evacuate to Khan Yunis. The man was walking with a walking stick and they said they simply would not be able to walk all the way there.”
The report added that the Nahal Brigade, the Carmeli Brigade and the Multidimensional Unit, decided to use the elderly Palestinian man, who was not named in reports, as a “human shield.”
An Israeli soldier told HaMakom that after explosives were placed around the Palestinian man’s neck, he was told “that if he does something wrong or not the way we want, the person behind him will pull the rope and his head will detach from the body.”
The soldier added, “That’s how he walked around with us for eight hours, even though he’s an 80-year-old man and even though he couldn’t run away from us. And that’s knowing that there’s a soldier behind him who can pull the rope at any second – and he’s done.”
According to the report, after the elderly Palestinian was forced to enter homes and tunnel allegedly used by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, the soldiers ordered him and his wife to leave the area for al-Mawasi, a small area that was just 1km wide and was being used to house hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
However, it added, no other battalions were informed that the couple would be making their way south and within 100 meters of being allowed to leave they were both shot dead. “They died like that, in the street,” another soldier was quoted as saying.
The report highlighted that the decision to use the elderly man as a human shield was part of a long-standing tactic called the “mosquito protocol” which involves Israeli soldiers ordering Palestinians to enter potentially booby-trapped locations - houses, tunnels, and other structures - ahead of the regime’s troops.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in August that the Israeli occupation army had repeatedly used innocent Palestinians to enter homes and tunnels in its war on Gaza.
During the 15 months of the Israeli regime’s genocidal war against the people of Gaza that began in October 2023, over 48,000 Palestinians were killed, most of them children and women.
Amid severe shortages of essential resources such as food, water, and medical supplies due to deliberate restrictions, the Israeli war on Gaza has forcibly displaced almost all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents.
On January 15, the Israeli regime, having failed to achieve any of its war objectives including the “elimination” of Hamas or the release of captives, was forced to agree to a ceasefire deal with the Gaza-based resistance movement.
