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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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Worldnews

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:...