GAZA, (PIC)
Zakariah is a young Palestinian who had not yet completed his fourth decade of life when the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza began in December 2023. The tanks reached his home near Sheikh Radwan Pool, north of Gaza City, starting a story he never imagined he would be the tragic hero of.
Zakariah, one of the victims of Israeli aggression during the ongoing genocide against Gaza, recounts the shocking details of his story to the Palestinian Information Center (PIC), closing his eyes as if he were reliving the events in real-time.
He recounts that when the heavy military vehicles and Israeli tanks arrived at Tunnel Street, they came within 300 meters of his house, prompting most of his family and brothers to leave. He stayed behind with his elderly mother because he could not find a safe way to get her out of the house due to her inability to walk and the intense, indiscriminate shelling in the area. However, under family pressure, he eventually left after some time, pushing his mother in her wheelchair.
“The shells were raining down from every direction. I barely made it to the industrial area and stayed in a small house belonging to a friend for a month and four days. Then the army re-entered the industrial area and besieged us in the house for seven days, during which we could not leave due to the heavy shelling,” Zakariah says.
He recounts, seemingly reluctant to remember what happened, “That day was a Friday. We prepared our food and ate it in the afternoon, then we heard voices in Hebrew from the neighboring house. I thought the neighbors had returned, but we were shocked to find that they were Israeli soldiers shortly thereafter, who stormed our house after blowing up the door.”
A human shield
Zakariah adjusted his position as he recalled the details, his facial expression changing. He said, “We felt extreme fear when about 60 soldiers entered our home. They separated the men from the women, forced me to strip, destroyed the house, and took my mother, the women, and the children—I didn’t know where—while we were taken under heavy gunfire.” Zakariah noted that during their journey, they saw dozens of corpses lying on the ground until they reached another house in the area, where they remained for seven days blindfolded and with hands and feet bound, without food, drink, or sleep, enduring severe torture.
On the eighth day, the difficult story began, a crime that Zakariah never imagined would happen to him. An Israeli officer ordered him to work for them for two days in exchange for his freedom and to be allowed to leave the area. They took him to the industrial roundabout, where he saw a large number of soldiers and tanks, marking the start of his use as a human shield in violation of all humanitarian laws and international treaties.
He said, “The officer ordered me to carry plastic pipes and move them from one place to another, which was an entrance to a tunnel belonging to the Palestinian resistance. The officer once asked me to enter a tunnel and walk inside, and when I told him I was scared, he forced me to go in and look inside several times. When I refused one time, a female soldier came close and fired a shot near me; I felt as if I were dead.”
He added, “After several days of this, and after insisting on refusing to be used as a human shield, one of the Israeli officers hit me on the head with a hammer, and I lost consciousness. When I regained consciousness, I found myself in a bombed building covered in rubble.”
Zakariah remained in this condition despite suffering from a cartilage disease, bound without food, drink, or sleep for several days, until the occupation soldiers forced him to flee towards Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, after deceiving him into believing that his family, who had been released, was there. He later discovered that they were still in Gaza City days after his arrival.
Regarding his observations during the displacement journey, Zakariah said that the road was filled with tanks and soldiers, noting that he saw a vehicle with six charred bodies.
Similar stories
Zakariah, whose story was documented by the PIC, is just one of thousands of Palestinians who have faced this type of violation, being used as human shields. The Washington Post revealed new testimonies about the occupation army using Palestinian civilians as human shields amid the ongoing genocide against Gaza.
The newspaper highlighted the occupation army’s coercion of Palestinian civilians to perform dangerous tasks in Gaza, in a blatant violation of international law and all relevant war conventions.
It indicated that the testimonies obtained by the newspaper are detailed and supported by statements from other witnesses, consistent with the testimony of an Israeli soldier who fought in Gaza, and interviews collected by the organization “Breaking the Silence,” which works with soldiers who served in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Visual evidence
The organization “Breaking the Silence” also presented what it said is visual evidence of the occupation army’s practices showing soldiers standing alongside two prisoners that the group said were being used as human shields. The men are seen sitting on the edge of a destroyed window in a ruined building, their hands bound, eyes blindfolded, and heads bowed.
In an interview with CNN, an Israeli soldier admitted that Palestinians were used as human shields to enter areas and tunnels that could potentially be booby-trapped in Gaza, in order to avoid putting army personnel at risk.
The soldier explained what is known as the “Mosquito Protocol” in the Israeli army, stating that using Palestinians as shields against explosive traps hidden in buildings and tunnels is a common practice among Israeli forces in Gaza. He added, “We ask them to enter the building before us; if there is a trap, it will explode in them, not us.”
The Israeli soldier mentioned that while carrying out his mission in Gaza, a high-ranking security officer brought two detained Palestinians, aged 16 and 20, and instructed the soldiers to use them as human shields before entering buildings. The officer told them, “Don’t think about international law; it’s better for the Palestinians to explode than our soldiers.”
The 1949 Geneva Convention obliges the occupying power to transfer detainees to safe areas away from the dangers of war. However, testimonies collected by dozens of human rights organizations confirm that the Israeli occupation army has detained hundreds of Palestinians in various combat areas during the assault on Gaza, for the purpose of using them as human shields and keeping the locations of its forces and equipment safe from military operations.
The question posed by the victims, in a tone of outrage directed at a cruel world, is: How long will the rogue state remain above the law? When will the time come for accountability for its soldiers and leaders for the horrific crimes they have committed?
