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How Common Is Israels Use Of Human Shields In Gaza And The West Bank?

Army under pressure to provide answers amid growing evidence that orders to use Palestinians as ‘fodder’ come from top. A recent report by The Associated Press that exposed the Israeli military’s “systematic” use of Palestinians as human shields has shone a light on an illegal practice that has become commonplace over the 19-month war in Gaza and parallel offensives in the West Bank. The report, published on Saturday, featured the testimonies of seven Palestinians who had been used as human shields in Gaza as well as the occupied West Bank, with two Israeli military officers confirming the ubiquity of the practice, which is considered a violation of international law. Responding to the allegations, Israel’s military told the news agency that using civilians as shields in its operations was strictly prohibited and that several cases were under investigation. So what are human shields? How widely have they been used by the Israeli military? And is Israel likely to launch a crackdown any time soon? Under international humanitarian law (IHL), the term “human shields” refers to the use of civilians or other protected persons, whether voluntary or involuntary, in order to shield military targets from attacks. The use of human shields in warfare is prohibited under IHL, but Israeli soldiers have allegedly employed it widely during the Gaza genocide. Earlier this year, Israeli newspaper Haaretz published the first-hand testimony of an Israeli soldier who said that the practice had been used “six times a day” in his unit and that it had effectively been “normalised” in military ranks. Back in August, the newspaper had revealed that Palestinians used as human shields in Gaza tended to be in their 20s and were used for periods of up to a week by units, which took pride in “locating” detainees to send into tunnel shafts and buildings. “It’s become part of [Israel’s] military culture,” said Nicola Perugini, co-author of Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire, noting the “huge archive” of evidence provided, not only by human rights groups, but also by soldiers, who were until recently posting evidence of Palestinians being used as “fodder” on social media with an apparent sense of total impunity. “Israeli army investigations have proven throughout the decades to be non-investigations,” Perugini said, noting that documentation of the practice, forbidden by Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions, started during the second Intifada of the early 2000s. “What we have now in the live-streamed genocide is the most documented archive of human shielding in the history of the different wars between Israel and the Palestinians,” he said. “What we have discovered is precisely that it is a systematic practice.” Throughout the conflict, the Israeli military’s response to allegations has been to withhold comment, to point to a lack of details, or, when faced with undeniable proof, to announce a probe. Last year, Israel declined to respond to a range of allegations put to it by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, which examined thousands of photos and videos – the bulk of them posted online by Israeli soldiers – and testimonies pointing to a number of potential war crimes, including the use of human shields. Among the atrocities revealed by the team in the resulting documentary was the case of Jamal Abu al-Ola, a detainee forced to act as a messenger by the Israelis. Footage showed the young man dressed in a white hazmat suit, with hands bound and head wrapped in a yellow cloth, telling displaced people at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis to evacuate. His mother followed him out, and witnessed him being shot dead by a sniper. Commenting on the case for the documentary, Rodney Dixon, an international law expert, said that al-Ola had been used as a “military asset”, which was “in many ways the definition of using persons as a human shield”. This year, the military pushed back on calls to investigate a report on an 80-year-old man forced to act as a human shield in Gaza City, saying that “additional details” were needed. The joint report from Israeli outlet The Hottest Place in Hell and +972 Magazine revealed a horrific new dimension of the so-called “mosquito procedure”, with anonymous Israeli soldiers recounting that a senior officer had placed an explosive cord around the man’s neck, threatening to blow his head off if he made any false moves. Ordered afterwards to flee his home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, the man was shot dead with his wife by another battalion. However, the military will acknowledge violations when confronted with undeniable evidence provoking widespread outrage, such as last year’s video of wounded Palestinian man Mujahed Azmi, strapped to the hood of an army jeep during a raid on the West Bank city of Jenin. That particular case was described as “human shielding in action” by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ special rapporteur to the occupied Palestinian territory. In a statement, Israel’s military said its forces were fired at and exchanged fire, wounding a suspect and apprehending him. It added that the “conduct of the forces in the video” did not “conform to the values” of the military and that the incident would be investigated. However, as Perugini observes, the very reason why the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes in Gaza is because legal experts doubt Israel’s ability to investigate itself. Despite vast evidence, the question of whether the military will be launching a crackdown aimed at banishing the apparently systematic practice is moot. Even so, pressure for accountability is growing. Rights groups say the practice of using human shields has been going on in the occupied Palestinian territories for decades. Breaking the Silence, a whistle-blower group gathering testimonies of former Israeli soldiers, cites evidence of what one high-ranking officer posted to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank back in 2002 called “neighbour procedure”. “You order a Palestinian to accompany you and to open the door of the house you want to enter, to knock on the door and ask to enter, with a very simple objective: if the door blows up, a Palestinian will be blown up, and soldiers won’t be blown up,” said the officer, ranked as a major. In 2005, an Israeli Supreme Court ruling explicitly barred the practice. Five years later, two soldiers were convicted of using a nine-year-old boy as a human shield to check suspected booby traps in the Gaza City suburb of Tal al-Hawa. It was reportedly the first such conviction in Israel. But the military’s use of human shields appears to have been normalised since then, particularly over the past 19 months of war in Gaza. Indeed, there are indications that orders may be coming from the very top. Haaretz’s investigation from last August cited sources as saying that former Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi was among the senior officers aware of the use of Palestinians in Gaza as human shields. And this week’s report by the AP cited an anonymous Israeli officer as saying that the practice had become ubiquitous by mid-2004 in Gaza, with every infantry unit using a Palestinian to clear houses by the time he finished his service, and with orders “to bring a mosquito” often being issued via radio. The report also cited an anonymous Israeli sergeant as saying that his unit had tried to refuse to use human shields in Gaza in 2024, but was told they had no choice, a high-ranking officer telling them they shouldn’t worry about international humanitarian law. Responding to claims in the AP report, the Israeli military told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that it would investigate the claims “if further details are provided”. “In several cases, investigations by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division were opened following suspicions that the military was involving Palestinians in military missions. These investigations are ongoing, and naturally, no further details can be provided at this time,” it said. In March, Haaretz reported that Israel’s military police were investigating six cases in which Israeli soldiers were alleged to have used Palestinians as human shields after the publication of a Red Cross report earlier in the year that highlighted the abuses. In the face of growing evidence that Palestinians are systematically being used as fodder for the Israeli military machine, in a war that has already killed more than 54,000 people, the military may find it increasingly difficult to kick the biggest can of all down the road. Said Perugini: “When you are in a genocide, then human shielding becomes a tool for something else. It becomes part of a different kind of crime, of the crime of crimes.” Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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Betrayal Or Win-win?: Britains EU Deal Reopens Old Wounds

Polls suggest most Britons want closer ties with the EU, but some believe the new deal violates Brexit’s mandate. London, United Kingdom — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has proudly described a new deal with the European Union spanning defence, security, and trade as a “win-win” pact that puts the nation “back on the world stage”. But nine years after Britain narrowly voted in favour of leaving the EU, the deal announced on May 19 has prompted a sigh of relief for some and stinging criticism from others, underscoring just how divisive the legacy of Brexit remains in the country. While many sections of British society have welcomed the agreement, Richard Tice, an MP for the anti-immigration party Reform UK, responded to the deal with a single-word post on social media: “Betrayal.” The deal offers concessions on European visas for British citizens, shorter queues at European airports, and possibly cheaper food in the UK. But on the flip side, the UK has agreed to allow European fishing fleets access to British waters for an extra 12 years. Phil Rusted, who runs a firm called Practical Plants in Suffolk that imports plants from Europe, is among those who are delighted. “My instinct is it is the best news we have got in nine years,” he said. “It almost gets us back to where were before Brexit. It helps me to take on more staff, to develop my business. The last few years have been very unpredictable; I will be more assured about what my costs are going to be.” The business sector, more broadly, has also largely responded positively to the agreement. “In a world where higher US tariffs are threatening to throw globalisation into reverse, trade deals, even if relatively minor, are generally good news,” said Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec Bank. “The obvious gainer is the food sector, which will benefit from a reduction in checks at the EU border, which could make a material difference to exporters’ and importers’ costs.” The Federation of Small Businesses, a group that represents small- and medium-sized firms in the UK, described the EU deal as “genuine progress”, crediting it for “untangling the rules for small exporters of plant and animal products”. “For too long, small businesses have shouldered the burden of unpredictable customs rules and red tape that sap confidence and ambition,” it said. And popular opinion in the UK appears to be behind the agreement. Polling by YouGov shows that 66 percent want to have a closer relationship with the EU, compared with just 14 percent who do not. To be sure, experts say the UK has to compromise too. “The devil in a trade deal is of course always in the detail,” said Paul Dales, chief economist at Capital Economics. In addition to accepting EU access to British waters for fishing, the UK has also agreed to pay an unspecified “appropriate financial contribution” to join the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, Dales pointed out. But the deal has also faced strong pushback. The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, in a statement on May 19, said the agreement “surrenders the best prospect that the fishing industry and coastal communities had for growth over the coming decade”. Three days later, it issued a more biting statement, saying the deal “drags UK fishing back into a past we thought had been left behind”. Shaw conceded that if the food industry had benefitted from the deal, the fishing sector stood “at the other end of the scale”. And it is not just fishers. The deal has also revived a broader debate over whether the UK, in seeking to realign itself with elements of the EU’s rules and regulations, is violating the mandate of Brexit. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, under whom Britain formally withdrew from the EU in 2020, described the deal as an “appalling sell out” in a post on X. Tony Gabana, a web developer from London who was too young to vote in 2016, holds that view. “Whether it’s a good deal or not, it does seem an attempt to reverse what a lot of people voted for,” Gabana said. “It doesn’t sit right with me. It feels like a step to further concessions, which, again, no one voted for. “Are we a democracy or not?” Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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Why Are The US And EU Struggling To Reach A Trade Deal?

Donald Trump’s U-turn sees European leaders call for the ‘lowest possible’ tariffs after levies are postponed from June 1 to July 9. But is that enough to satisfy the US president? US President Donald Trump has backed away — for now — from imposing steep levies on the European Union, two days after he threatened the bloc with 50 percent tariffs. On Sunday, Trump agreed to extend his deadline for trade talks until July 9, from the June 1 deadline he set on Friday, after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc needed more time to “reach a good deal”. Von der Leyen reportedly told Trump during a phone call that the EU needed more time to come to an agreement and asked him to delay the trade duties until July, the deadline he had originally set when he announced his “reciprocal” tariffs on almost all countries around the world in April. Trump said that he had granted the request, and that von der Leyen told him, “We will rapidly get together to see if we can work something out.” Von der Leyen said in a social media post that the EU was ready to move quickly in trade talks. During a trip to Vietnam on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he hoped Washington and Brussels could achieve a deal with the lowest tariffs possible. “The discussions are advancing,” he told reporters. The US president’s latest salvo comes amid Washington’s stop-and-start global trade war that kicked off in April. Trump’s moves have unnerved markets, businesses and consumers and raised fears of a global economic downturn. But while his approach has yielded a trade deal with the United Kingdom, and negotiations are believed to be progressing with a range of other nations — from India to Vietnam to Japan — key sticking points complicate the prospects of an agreement with the EU. Here’s what the tiff is about, and why the US and EU are struggling to reach a trade deal: Trump’s recent broadside against the EU was prompted by the White House’s belief that negotiations with the bloc are not progressing fast enough. “Our discussions with them are going nowhere!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025. There is no Tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States,” he wrote last Friday. By Sunday, however, Trump had changed course. He welcomed von der Leyen’s assertion that the bloc was willing to negotiate but that it needed more time. He added that it was his “privilege” to delay the increased tariffs. Trump said, “[von der Leyen] said she wants to get down to serious negotiation. We had a very nice call … she said we will rapidly get together and see if we can work something out,” he told reporters. Trump is thought to be opposed to the idea of mutually cutting tariffs to zero – an EU proposal. The US president has insisted on preserving a baseline 10 percent tax on most imports from America’s trading partners. On May 8, the UK agreed to a trade deal that kept Trump’s 10 percent reciprocal tariff rate in place. EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic said the European Commission – the EU’s executive arm – remains committed to securing a deal that works for both sides. But he warned that EU-US trade “must be guided by mutual respect, not threats.” In 2024, EU exports to the US totalled about 532 billion euros ($603bn). Pharmaceuticals, cars and auto parts, chemicals and aircraft were among the largest exports, according to EU data. Last week, the US rejected a proposal sent by the European Commission. The EU had offered to remove tariffs on industrial goods, boost access for some US agricultural products and co-develop AI data centres, Bloomberg reported. It also proposed enhancing economic cooperation in areas like shipbuilding and port infrastructure, as well as by establishing an EU-US energy partnership covering gas, nuclear power and oil. In exchange, Brussels wants the Trump administration to have more flexibility on lowering the 10 percent baseline tariff — including by potentially lowering it in phases over time. While the EU has said it wants to find a negotiated solution, it has also been preparing to retaliate if necessary. Member states have approved a 50 percent tariff on a batch of US products worth 21 billion euros ($23.8bn), including maize, wheat and clothing, which will kick in on July 14 without a deal. The bloc is also preparing tariffs on other imported products totalling 95 billion euros ($107.8bn), targeting industrial goods like Boeing aircraft and cars, as well as bourbon. Trump has long accused the European Union of “ripping off” the US, and is determined that Brussels will adopt measures to lower its 198.2-billion-euro ($225bn) goods trade surplus with the US. Washington has repeatedly raised concerns over Europe’s value-added tax, as well as its regulations on IT and food exports. Trump contends that these controls act as de facto trade barriers to the EU. For his part, Sefcovic recently told the Financial Times that he wants to slash the US-EU trade deficit by buying more US gas, weapons and agricultural products. In addition, the bloc is reportedly open to reducing its dependence on Chinese exports and on erecting tariffs against subsidised Chinese exports, which Trump is keen on. Sefcovic and his US counterpart, Jamieson Greer, are scheduled to meet in Paris next month to discuss ways of de-escalating the ongoing US-EU trade dispute. In 2024, the EU exported 531.6 billion euros ($603bn) in goods to the US and imported products worth 333 billion euros ($377.8bn), resulting in a trade surplus of almost 200 billion euros ($227bn). On the flip side, the US runs a surplus of more than 109 billion euros ($124bn) in services as of 2023, with notable IT exports, led by large American tech companies, charges for intellectual property and financial services. Trump’s tariffs would, in turn, hit both economies hard. According to a 2019 study by the International Monetary Fund, a full-scale US-EU trade war could cost 0.3-to-0.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on both sides. Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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Mapping Israels Military Campaign In The Occupied West Bank

Research group Forensic Architecture finds that Israel is using tactics in the West Bank similar to those used in Gaza. Israel is applying many of the tactics used in its war on Gaza to seize and control territory across the occupied West Bank during its Operation Iron Wall campaign, a new report [pdf] says. Israel launched the operation in January. Defending what the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) termed “by far the longest and most destructive operation in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada in the 2000s”, the Israeli military claimed its intention was to preserve its “freedom of action” within the Palestinian territory as it continued to rip up roads and destroy buildings, infrastructure, and water and electricity lines. The report by the British research group Forensic Architecture suggested Israel has imposed what researchers call a system of “spatial control”, essentially a series of mechanisms that allow it to deploy military units across Palestinian territory at will. The report focused on Israeli action in the refugee camps of Jenin and Far’a in the northern West Bank and Nur Shams and Tulkarem in the northwestern West Bank. Researchers interviewed and analysed witness statements, satellite imagery and hundreds of videos to demonstrate a systematic plan of coordinated Israeli action intended to impose a network of military control in refugee camps across the West Bank similar to that imposed upon Gaza. In the process, existing roads have been widened while homes, private gardens and adjacent properties have been demolished to allow for the rapid deployment of Israeli military vehicles. “This network of military routes is clearly visible in the Jenin refugee camp and evidence indicates that the same tactic is, at the time of publication, being repeated in the Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps,” the report’s authors noted. Israeli ministers have previously stated that they planned to use the same methods in the West Bank that have destroyed the Gaza Strip, leading to more than 54,000 Palestinians killed and the majority of buildings damaged or destroyed. In January, Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel would apply the “lesson” of “repeated raids in Gaza” to the Jenin refugee camp. The following month, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has control over much of the administration of the West Bank, boasted that “Tulkarem and Jenin will look like Jabalia and Shujayea. Nablus and Ramallah will resemble Rafah and Khan Younis,” comparing refugee camps in the West Bank to areas in Gaza that have been devastated by Israeli bombing and ground offensives. “They will also be turned into uninhabitable ruins, and their residents will be forced to migrate and seek a new life in other countries,” Smotrich said. Hamze Attar, a Luxembourg-based defence analyst, told Al Jazeera these tactics are not new in Palestinian territory, having first been deployed by the British during their mandate over historic Palestine, which preceded Israel’s foundation in 1948. “It’s part of the “counterinsurgency” strategy,” he said. “Bigger roads [mean] easy access to forces – bigger roads, less congested battle management; bigger roads, less ability for fighters to escape from house to house.” About 75,000 Palestinians live in the Jenin, Nur Shams, Far’a and Tulkarem refugee camps. They were either displaced themselves or descended from those displaced during the Nakba (which means “catastrophe”) when roughly 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes by Zionist forces from 1947 to 1949 as part of the creation of Israel. Now, at least 40,000 of those living in the West Bank refugee camps have been displaced as a result of Operation Iron Wall, according to the United Nations. As in Gaza, many of these people were forced from their homes on orders from the Israeli military, which researchers said have been “weaponised” against the local population. Once an area had been cleared of its buildings and roads, it becomes a kill zone and the Israeli military is free to reshape and build whatever it likes without interference from residents, the report said. “Such engineered mass displacement has allowed the Israeli military to reshape these built environments unobstructed,” the report noted, adding that when Palestinian residents did try to return to their homes after Israeli military action, they were often obstructed by the continued presence of troops. Forensic Architecture researchers said Israeli attacks on medical facilities in Gaza have also spilled over into the West Bank. “Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure in the West Bank have included placing hospitals under siege, obstructing ambulance access to areas with injured civilians, targeting medical personnel, and using at least one medical facility as a detention and interrogation centre,” the report said. During Israel’s initial attacks on the Jenin refugee camp on January 21, multiple hospitals were surrounded by the Israeli military, including Jenin Government Hospital, al-Amal Hospital and al-Razi Hospital, researchers noted. The following day, civilians and hospital staff reported that the main road leading to Jenin Government Hospital was destroyed by Israeli military bulldozers and access to the hospital was blocked by newly constructed berms, or land barriers, On February 4, reports from Jenin said the Israeli military was obstructing ambulances carrying injured people from reaching the hospital. Also carrying unmistakable echoes of Gaza was an UNRWA report in early February saying the Israeli military had forcibly co-opted one of the health centres at the UNRWA-run Arroub camp near Jerusalem as an interrogation and detention site. The attacks on healthcare facilities were part of a wider campaign to damage civilian infrastructure in the West Bank, the Forensic Architecture report said, using armoured bulldozers, controlled demolitions and air attacks. Researchers said they verified more than 200 examples of Israeli soldiers deliberately destroying buildings and street networks in all four of the refugee camps with armoured bulldozers reducing civilian roads to barely passable piles of exposed earth and rubble. Civilian property, including parked vehicles, food carts and agricultural buildings, such as greenhouses, were also destroyed during Israeli military operations, they said. Follow Al Jazeera English:...