Israeli ‘Human Shield’ Claim Is Full Of Holes

By Craig Nelson,
Associate Editor
Last Updated: January 13. 2009 9:30AM UAE / GMT
Courtesy Of The National

Palestinian medics carry a wounded boy who was injured in an Israeli strike into Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Khalil Hamra / AP Photos

The notion does not lose currency, even as the death toll climbs. By yesterday, the war in Gaza had left at least 905 Palestinians dead, a little less than half of whom were civilians.

Still, in the view of Israeli leaders, diplomats and spokesmen, Hamas is to blame for the carnage, even though the bodies of the civilians may be pocked with wounds meted out by Israeli bombs, artillery and bullets. The slain non-combatants, they say repeatedly, have been used by Hamas as “human shields”.

Under international humanitarian law, the definition of a “human shield” is quite specific: parties to a conflict are prohibited from using civilians to shield military objectives or military operations from attack.

A recent study by the International Committee for the Red Cross, the widely recognised arbiter over questions related to the laws of war and war crimes, said the use of human shields generally involves cases “where persons were actually taken to military objectives in order to shield those objectives from attack,” with the individuals often held against their will.

As in previous wars, Israel has used the term “human shield” more loosely during its current operation in the Gaza Strip, which today enters its 18th day.

In the deaths of at least 39 Palestinians at the UN’s Al Fakhoura school last week, it was a default position, apparently designed to blunt criticism that its forces were acting too cavalierly towards civilians in Gaza. Justifying Israel’s attack on the school, Israeli officials at first claimed that their fighters were responding to mortar fire from that location.

Then the spokesman for the UN relief agency in Gaza, Christopher Gunness, said the organisation was “99.9 per cent certain” that there had been no militants or militant activity within the school compound. The agency also said that all its schools and other facilities were clearly marked and that their locations had been provided to the Israel Defense Forces.

Mark Regev, the chief spokesman for Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, replied that Hamas was responsible for the deaths because it had used the civilians as “human shields” to try to make their own positions immune from attack. Mr Regev offered no evidence that Hamas fighters had forced Gazan civilians at gunpoint to provide cover for their attacks or protection from retaliation.

While actual proof that Hamas is using human shields appears to be lacking in this incident and others, the repeated accusation by Israel helps buy time and dilutes international pressure for a ceasefire.

It also preserves the reputation of the IDF, which has been frequently praised by the country’s leaders as the “most moral” military force in the world. Further, it panders to the widely held view in Europe, the United States and elsewhere that Islamists of any stripe are life-hating nihilists.

For the truth in that, assume hypothetically that a Hamas or Hizbollah missile struck Israeli military headquarters, the Kirya. The compound is located in downtown Tel Aviv, surrounded by commercial and residential buildings. In all likelihood hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians would be killed.

It is highly unlikely that saying they never targeted civilians would spare Hamas or Hizbollah international condemnation. It also seems unlikely that Israel or its allies would blame the IDF for the bloodshed, saying it had effectively used the people of the neighbourhood as “human shields”.

Their reproaches of Hamas and other Palestinian militants aside, Israeli political and military officials are well aware of the issues surrounding the use of “human shields”.

In 2005, Israel’s Supreme Court barred the IDF from using Palestinians as human shields, which had been a common practice.

The IDF euphemistically dubbed the procedure of forcing Palestinian civilians at gunpoint to go before them into buildings from which they feared attack its “neighbour procedure”. (“The idea is that a person is going in to warn people inside and explain the situation,” army spokesman Capt Jacob Dallal said at the time. “It’s done for the safety of everyone.”)

Despite the court ruling, the practice has continued, according to Israeli and international human rights groups. Amnesty International said last week that Israeli soldiers were taking over Palestinian homes in Gaza and using the homes as military observation and firing positions, effectively using their imprisoned occupants as “human shields”.

Although Hamas has been accused only by Israel of using “human shields”, the group has been criticised for other violations of international humanitarian law before and during the war.

Deliberately firing indiscriminate weapons into civilian populated areas, as Hamas has done with rockets into southern Israel, “constitutes a war crime”, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said late last month.

According to Amnesty International, both Hamas fighters and Israeli soldiers have violated the rules of war by firing at each other from areas close to civilian homes, endangering their inhabitants.

Hamas also may be guilty of what the ICRC describes as “locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas”.

Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence service, has told the Israeli cabinet that the Gaza-based leadership of Hamas is holed up in underground housing beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, according to a report on Sunday in The New York Times.

In the past, Hamas leaders have defended rocket firing, suicide bombings and other violations of international humanitarian law as the necessary and unavoidable responses to Israel’s military superiority and what they describe as its treachery.

“We used peaceful demonstrations in the first intifada and Israel used force. We threw stones and they used force, deportations and mass killings,” Mahmoud Zahar said three years ago in the rebuilt car park of his Gaza home, which had been destroyed by Israeli missiles several months earlier.

“We’re playing inside the body of Israel. It used dirty methods in order to strengthen their existence and to extend their borders. We don’t admire violence, but we have been forced to use methods against Israeli aggression.”

In other words, taken together with Israel’s repeated accusation that Hamas is using “human shields”, each side in the current war has what it regards as justifications to continue violating international humanitarian law when it comes to respecting the lives of civilians.

The difficulties of fighting in the warren of narrow streets and crowded apartment blocks that mark Gaza’s three main population centres – Gaza City, Khan Yunis and Rafah – are no excuse, human rights organisations insist. Humanitarian law requires that the parties to a conflict take constant care during military operations to spare the civilian population.

In particular, “the attacking party is not relieved from its obligation to take into account the risk to civilians simply because it considers the defending party responsible for having located legitimate military targets within or near populated areas”, Human Rights Watch has said.

cnelson@thenational.ae