RAMALLAH: Israeli soldiers forced Palestinians to serve as “human shields” during house searches in the Gaza Strip last January despite a 2005 High Court ruling outlawing the practice.
The allegations were made in testimonies of soldiers released to the public on Wednesday in a new report that accuses the Israeli Army of war crimes.
The report was compiled by Breaking The Silence, an organization established several years ago by veterans of the Israeli forces to collect the testimonies of soldiers who have participated in operations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The testimony of some 30 soldiers, all unnamed, shows that the massive destruction wreaked on the Palestinian territory was “a direct result of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) policy,” said Breaking The Silence.
The report also repeats charges that white phosphorus was fired indiscriminately into Gaza. The group said “massive destruction was unrelated to any direct threat to Israeli forces” and “permissive” rules of engagement.
In one testimony, a soldier from the Golani Brigade’s elite Egoz Unit said his unit employed a variation of a practice called “neighbor procedure” when it checked homes for Palestinian militants. The soldier told the organization troops would send Palestinians into homes in which the soldiers believed militants were hiding. “The practice was not to call it ‘the neighbor procedure.’ Instead it was called ‘Johnny,’” the soldier said, using army slang for Palestinian civilians. At every home, the soldier said, if there were armed occupants the house was besieged with the goal of getting the militants out of the building alive. The soldier said he was present at several such operations. In an incident, his commanders told him that three armed militants were in a house. Attack helicopters were brought in. “They ... again sent the (Palestinian) neighbor in. At first he said that nothing had happened (to the armed men),” the soldier said.
“Again they brought in attack helicopters and fired. They again sent in the neighbor. He said there were two dead and one still alive. They then brought in a bulldozer and began to knock the house down on him until (the neighbor) entered.” The soldier said he had been told that the only remaining militant alive was captured and turned over to Israeli intelligence agency, Shin Bet.
The Golani soldier also testified that his commanders reported incidents in which Palestinians were given sledgehammers to break through walls to let the army enter through the side of houses. The army feared that the doors were booby-trapped. Another said his commander told him of instances when “the force would enter while placing rifle barrels on a civilian’s shoulder, advancing into a house and using him as a human shield.”
Instructions received before battle led to trigger-happy soldiers, civilian deaths and massive destruction in the densely populated and impoverished enclave, soldiers said. “No one said ‘kill innocents,’” said one. “But the instruction was that for the army, anyone there is a suspect and should be taken down,” he added. “I understood... that it’s better to shoot first and ask questions later,” said another. “The goal was to carry out an operation with the least possible casualties for the army, without it even asking itself what the price would be for the other side,” said a third.
“The difficult thing about the atmosphere was the negligible value placed on human life. People didn’t seem to be upset about taking human lives,” said one soldier.
Others spoke of massive destruction. “Houses were demolished everywhere ... We didn’t see a single house that was not hit ... It looked awful, like in those World War II films where nothing remained. A totally destroyed city.” Many houses were demolished as part of a “day after” policy, which meant “taking down a house... (whose) single sin is the fact that it is situated on top of a hill in the Gaza Strip,” said another.
One soldier related an incident in which his commander told troops not to fire warning shots at a man approaching their position at night until he was some dozen meters way.
“Suddenly a burst of fire is heard from upstairs ... The old man gave such a scream as I’ll never forget as long as I live ... The commander comes downstairs, glowing, ’here’s an opener for tonight’.” When they checked on the man the next morning, they saw “the guy was clean, nothing on him, except for a torch in his hand, a white shirt and a long beard. A 50-60-year-old man lying on the road.”
While one commander would not let his soldiers break anything in a house and another unit cleaned up after they left, others engaged in vandalism.
“In one house we entered, I saw guys had defecated in drawers ... I remember a filthy drawing in a children’s nursery ... I really felt ashamed ... and so do guys who were with me.”
The Breaking the Silence report is the latest in a number of reports that have been severely critical of Israel’s three-week operation against Hamas earlier this year.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak responded to the report saying “if anyone has any criticism, information of reservations over the army’s operations, they must direct them to me as the State of Israel’s defense minister and to the Israeli government, which was the one to order to the army to restore calm in the southern communities.”
Amnesty International said that some 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the fighting, which lasted from Dec. 27, 2008 to Jan. 18, 2009. Of these, 300 were children, more than 115 were women and about 85 were men over the age of 50.
Whole streets in parts of the Gaza Strip were razed to minimize the risk of Israeli casualties from small-arms attacks and booby-trap bombs. The United Nations says Gaza six months later is just beginning to clear 600,000 tons of rubble.
— With input from agencies
