The Israeli military forced an 80-year-old Palestinian man to act as a human shield in Gaza by tying an explosive cord around his neck and threatening to have his head blown off, an investigation by the Israeli outlet The Hottest Place in Hell has found.
A senior officer from the army’s Nahal Brigade tied the explosive cord around the man’s neck before he was ordered to scout houses. After eight hours, soldiers ordered the man to flee with his wife from their home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood in May, said +972 magazine, which reported the piece in partnership with The Hottest Place in Hell.
But when another Israeli battalion spotted the elderly couple on the street, they were shot dead on the spot, according to Israeli soldiers present at the scene.
The Israeli soldiers had initially encountered the couple in their home. They told Arabic-speaking soldiers that they were unable to flee to southern Gaza due to mobility difficulties.
But even in his condition, the soldiers forced the unnamed 80-year-old to walk ahead of them with his cane, while his wife was detained in their house.
A soldier told the investigation that the commander had decided to use the Palestinian couple as “mosquitoes”, referring to a procedure where the Israeli army forces Palestinian civilians to serve as human shields to protect the Israeli forces from being shot or blown up.
“He entered each house before us so that if there were [explosives] or a militant inside, he would [take the hit] instead of us,” one soldier said.
“He was told that if he did anything wrong or didn’t follow orders, the soldier behind him would pull the cord, and his head would be torn from his body.”
The man was forced to act as a human shield for eight hours, before he was ordered, along with his wife, to walk towards the so-called “humanitarian zone” in southern Gaza.
But the soldiers did not care to tell nearby Israeli divisions that the couple was going to pass through the area, according to the testimonies.
“After 100 metres, the other battalion saw them and immediately shot them,” a soldier said. “They died like that, in the street.”
Al Jazeera has reached out to the Israeli army for comment on the reported incident.
Israeli forces’ use of Palestinian civilians as human shields has been extensively reported on, despite it being forbidden under international law.
In August, the Israeli daily Haaretz published an expose revealing that Israeli troops had abducted Palestinian civilians, dressed them in military uniforms, attached cameras to their bodies, and sent them into underground tunnels as well as buildings in order to shield Israeli troops.
“[I]t’s hard to recognise them. They’re usually wearing Israeli army uniforms, many of them are in their 20s, and they’re always with Israeli soldiers of various ranks,” the Haaretz article said. But if you look more closely, “you see that most of them are wearing sneakers, not army boots. And their hands are cuffed behind their backs and their faces are full of fear”.
In the occupied West Bank in June, Israeli forces tied a wounded Palestinian man to the hood of their military jeep, in an apparent use of a human shield.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ special rapporteur to the occupied Palestinian territory, slammed the incident, calling it “human shielding in action”.
And in January 2024, Palestinian shop owner Bahaa el-Din Abu Ras, 36, recounted how Israeli soldiers used him as a human shield for nearly two hours in Dura, in the occupied West Bank.
“So many questions went through my mind: Will I get to go back to my family? Will I be shot or would a rock hit me? Will I be arrested by these soldiers for whatever reason? When or how can I be released, in the middle of this warzone?” Abu Ras said. “I spent about an hour and a half like that, not sure when I would be killed and whether I would ever rest again.”