Innocent Palestinians are regularly forced by soldiers to enter houses in Gaza to make sure there are no terrorists or explosives. So why is the IDF’s Military Police Criminal Investigation Division opening only six investigations into the use of human shields?
Haaretz
In Gaza, human shields are used by Israeli soldiers at least six times a day.
I (anonymous) served in Gaza for nine months, and first came across these procedures, called ‘mosquito protocol’ in December 2023. It was only two months into the ground offensive, long before there was a shortage of dogs from the IDF’s canine unit, Oketz, who were used for this purpose. This became the insane, unofficial excuse for this insane, unofficial procedure. I didn’t realize then how ubiquitous using human shields, whom we referred to as a ‘shawish,’ would become.
Today, almost every platoon keeps a ‘shawish,’ and no infantry force enters a house before a ‘shawish’ clears it. This means there are four ‘shawishes’ in a company, twelve in a battalion, and at least 36 in a brigade.
We operate a sub-army of slaves.
The procedure is simple. Innocent Palestinians are forced to enter houses in Gaza and ‘clear’ them, to make sure there are no terrorists or explosives.
I recently saw that the IDF’s Military Police Criminal Investigation Division opened six investigations into the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, and my jaw dropped. I’ve seen cover-ups before, but this is a new low. If the MPCID wanted to do its job seriously, it would have to open far more than even a thousand investigations. But all the MPCID wants is for us to be able to tell ourselves and the world that we’re investigating ourselves, so they’ve found six scapegoats and are pinning it all on them.
I was present at a meeting where one of the brigade commanders presented the ‘mosquito’ concept to the division commander as a ‘necessary operational achievement to accomplish the mission.’ It was so normalized that I thought I was hallucinating.
As early as August of 2024, when this story broke in Haaretz and in testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence, a senior source said that both the outgoing IDF Chief of Staff and the outgoing Head of the Southern Command knew about the procedure. I don’t know which is worse: that they don’t know what’s going on in the army they command, or that they do know and continue regardless.
It’s been more than seven months since that story was published, and soldiers have continued detaining Palestinians and forcing them to go into houses and tunnels ahead of them. While the Chief of Staff and the Head of the Southern Command continued to say and do nothing about it, the protocol became even more widespread and normalized.
The highest-ranking personnel on the ground have known about the use of human shields for more than a year, and no one has tried to stop it. On the contrary, it was defined as an ‘operational necessity’.
It’s important to note that we can enter houses without using human shields. We did it for months, according to a proper entry procedure which included sending in a robot, a drone, or a dog. This procedure proved itself, but it took time, and the command wanted achievements here and now.
In other words, we forced Palestinians to act as human shields not because it was safer for IDF troops, but because it was faster. That’s why we risked the lives of Palestinians who were suspected of nothing other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It didn’t go through without pushback. Soldiers and officers resisted. I resisted. But that’s what happens when the senior command doesn’t care and the politicians even less. That’s what happens when you’re quick on the trigger and operationally burned-out to the max. That’s what happens when you’re in an unending war that fails to bring the hostages back alive month after month. You lose moral judgment.
A friend who’s an officer in the army told me about an incident they experienced: They encountered a terrorist in a house that had already been cleared by a ‘shawish.’ The ‘shawish’ was an elderly man, and when he realized he’d messed up, he was so scared he soiled himself. I don’t know what became of him. I was afraid to ask.
This one case shows that the justifications they gave us that the procedure is for ‘security’ purposes weren’t true. These people aren’t professional combatants; they don’t know how to scan a house. The soldiers don’t trust them anyway because they’re not there of their own free will. Sometimes, ‘shawishes’ are sent to houses just to set those houses on fire or blow them up. It has nothing to do with security.
I shudder to think what this does to the psyche of anyone who has to go into a house, terrified, in place of armed soldiers.
Does every mother who sends her son off to fight understand that he might find himself grabbing a Palestinian his father’s age, or his younger brother’s age, and violently forcing him to run in front of him, unarmed, into a potentially booby-trapped house or tunnel?
That’s why the MPCID investigation is so infuriating. First, the soldiers are made to use Palestinians as human shields, and then the officers use lower-ranking soldiers as their own human shields, all while we’re still desperately trying to get back the hostages that are being held, in part, to serve as human shields for Hamas.
It was obvious that it was only a matter of time before this story blew up, but it’s too big for the MPCID to handle. Only an independent State Commission of Inquiry could get to the bottom of this.
Until then, we have every reason to worry about international courts in the Hague, because this procedure is a crime – a crime even the army now admits. It happens daily and is much more common than the public is being told.