Israel Uses Gazans as Human Shields

"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."

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