The use of human shields in war is not a new phenomenon. Militaries have forced civilians to serve as human shields for centuries. Yet, despite this long and dubious history, Israel has managed to introduce a new form of shielding in Gaza, one that appears unprecedented in the history of warfare.
The practice was initially revealed by Al Jazeera but, subsequently, Haaretz published an entire expose about how Israeli troops have abducted Palestinian civilians, dressed them in military uniforms, attached cameras to their bodies, and sent them into underground tunnels as well as buildings in order to shield Israeli troops.
“[I]t’s hard to recognise them. They’re usually wearing Israeli army uniforms, many of them are in their 20s, and they’re always with Israeli soldiers of various ranks,” the Haaretz article notes. But if you look more closely, “you see that most of them are wearing sneakers, not army boots. And their hands are cuffed behind their backs and their faces are full of fear.”
In the past, Israeli troops have used robots and trained dogs with cameras on their collars as well as Palestinian civilians to serve as shields. However, Palestinians who were used as shields always wore civilian clothes and thus could be identified as civilians. By dressing Palestinian civilians in military garb and sending them into the tunnels, the Israeli military has, in effect, altered the very logic of human shielding.
Indeed, human shielding has historically been predicated on recognising that the person shielding a military target is a vulnerable civilian (or prisoner of war). This recognition is meant to deter the opposing warring party from attacking the target because the vulnerability of the human shield ostensibly invokes moral restraints on the use of lethal violence. It is precisely the recognition of vulnerability that is key to the purported effectiveness of human shielding and for deterrence to have a chance of working.
By dressing Palestinian civilians in Israeli military uniforms and casting them as combatants the Israeli military purposefully conceals their vulnerability. It deploys them as shields not to deter Palestinian fighters from striking Israeli soldiers, but rather to draw their fire and thus reveal their location, allowing the Israeli troops to launch a counterattack and kill the fighters. The moment these human shields, masked as soldiers, are sent into the tunnels, they are transformed from vulnerable civilians into fodder.
The Israeli army’s treatment of Palestinian civilians as expendable might not come as a surprise given the racialised form of colonial governance to which they have been subjected for decades. The deep-seated racism explains the ease with which Israeli President Isaac Herzog publicly claimed that there are “no innocent civilians” in the Gaza Strip as well as the prevailing indifference among Israel’s Jewish public to the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians who have been killed.
Indeed, Israelis were not shocked when their political leaders repeatedly called to “erase” Gaza, “flatten” it, and turn it “into Dresden”. They have either supported or have been apathetic towards the damage and destruction of 60 percent of all civilian structures and sites in Gaza.
Within this context, dressing Palestinian civilians in military garb and sending them into tunnels is likely to be perceived in the eyes of most Israeli soldiers – and large sections within the Israeli public – as not much more than a detail.
Nonetheless, this new form of human shielding does shed important light on how racism plays out in the battlefield. It reveals that the military has taken to heart and operationalised Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s racist guidelines that “we are fighting human animals”, exposing how Israeli soldiers are relating to Palestinians as either bait or prey. Like hunters who use raw meat to lure animals they want to capture or kill, the Israeli troops use Palestinian civilians as if they were bare flesh whose function is to attract the hunter’s prey.
Racism also informs Israel’s disregard for international law. By randomly detaining Palestinian civilians – including youth and the elderly – and then dressing them in military garb before forcing them to walk in front of soldiers, the Israeli troops violate not only the legal provision against the use of human shields but also the provision that deals with perfidy and prohibits warring parties from making use of military “uniforms of adverse Parties while engaging in attacks or in order to shield, favour, protect or impede military operations”. Two war crimes in a single action.
The horrifying truth, however, is that no matter how much evidence emerges around Israel’s use of this new human shielding practice or indeed any other breach of international law, the likelihood that it will change actions on the ground is small.
Hopes that international law will protect and bring justice to the Palestinian people have historically been misplaced because colonial racism – as critical legal scholars from Antony Anghie to Noura Erekat have pointed out – informs not merely Israel’s actions but also the international legal order, including the way the International Criminal Court (ICC) metes out justice. To get a glimpse of this racism, all one needs to do is browse the website of the International Criminal Court to see who it has been willing to indict.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.