Israel Uses Gazans as Human
Shields
14/01/2009
IslamOnline.net & Newspapers
"It has been practiced by the Israeli army for many
years and they are doing it again in Gaza now," said
Rovera, an Amnesty International investigator. (Google)
CAIRO — Israeli invading troops are using armless
civilians in the Gaza Strip as human shields to protect
them against attacks from Palestinian resistance
fighters.
"It's standard practice for Israeli soldiers to go into
a house, lock up the family in a room on the ground
floor and use the rest of the house as a military base,
as a sniper's position," Donatella Rovera, Amnesty
International 's investigator in Israel, told The
Guardian on Tuesday, January 13.
"That is the absolute textbook case of human shields."
Last week, Amnesty accused Israel of using civilians as
human shields in its nearly three-week onslaught against
the Gaza Strip, which has so far killed more than 971,
half of them women and children.
Rovera said this is not the first time that Israel has
used Palestinian civilians as human shields.
"It has been practiced by the Israeli army for many
years and they are doing it again in Gaza now."
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In several well-documented cases, Israeli troops forced
Palestinian civilians, at gunpoint, to go before them
into buildings from which they feared attack.
They also use Palestinians to drive out wanted
Palestinian resistance fighters by making them approach
their homes first and asking them to surrender.
In 2005, Israel's Supreme Court banned the military's
practice of using Palestinian civilians as human shields
in arrest raids.
The use of human shields in conflict is prohibited under
the Geneva Conventions which clearly states that they
"shall not be used to…shield military objectives from
attacks or to shield, favor or impede military
operations."
War Crimes
Amnesty’s Rovera also accused Israeli troops of
committing war crimes by using weapons which cause huge
fatalities among the 1.6 million population of Gaza.
"There has been reckless and disproportionate and in
some cases indiscriminate use of force," she said.
"There has been the use of weaponry that shouldn't be
used in densely populated areas because it's known that
it will cause civilian fatalities and casualties," added
the investigator.
"They have extremely sophisticated missiles that can be
guided to a moving car and they choose to use other
weapons or decide to drop a bomb on a house knowing that
there were women and children inside.
"These are very, very clear breaches of international
law."
The Human Right Watch has accused Israel of using
white-phosphorus, a chemical that burns away human flesh
to the bone, in shelling Gaza.
The 1980 Third Convention on Conventional Weapons bans
the use of white phosphorus as a weapon, even against
military targets situated within population centers.
John Ging, director of UNRWA operations in Gaza, called
Tuesday for a full investigation into reports of
Israel's use of illegal weapons in its 18-day offensive.
He also appealed for the international community to
provide protection for civilians in Gaza as mandated by
the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
"All the people, the first thing they say to me and the
last thing they say to me is 'Please, we need
protection, nowhere is safe'," he told reporters in
Geneva via an audio link from an UNRWA distribution
center after visiting shelters and clinics.
"And they're right, nowhere is safe."
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