On Friday, 27 June, Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, have submitted an urgent appeal to UN Special Procedures documenting a pattern of incidents across the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) where Israeli soldiers have deliberately coerced Palestinian civilians, including children as young as nine years of age, into being human shields to walk in front of them, and search various places, including houses and tunnels, so that hostile fire is directed at them and not at the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF).

For decades, Israel has employed practices of using Palestinians as human shields. This pattern represents an Israeli practice known as the ‘Johnnie procedure’ or ‘neighbour procedure’, where Palestinian children are used by the Israeli military to knock on the doors of Palestinian houses and apartments while the IOF searches them. The patterns further involve arbitrary detention, beatings to obtain information on members of the Palestinian resistance, and the use of intimidating methods, including the use of police dogs. Moreover, Palestinian abductees have been forced to dress in Israeli “military uniforms, attached cameras to their bodies, and sent into underground tunnels as well as buildings in order to shield Israeli troops” making it “hard to recognise them.”

In Gaza, Israel has engaged in a pattern of attacks against the civilian population, by characterising them as “human shields”, alleging that civilians and civilian properties have been used for shielding military objectives and on this basis, indiscriminately targeting them in attacks. Israel alleges that resistance movements operating in Gaza resort to using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

The use of human shields is a method of warfare prohibited by International Humanitarian Law (IHL). It takes advantage of the presence or movements of civilians, whether voluntary or involuntary, to shield military objectives or combatants from an attack, or to shield, favour or impede military operations.^[1] Relying on this rhetoric, Israel has largely broadened the scope of ‘legitimate’ targets through a blanket designation of an entire population as human shields. It has done so without presenting verified evidence to support the allegations.^[2]

By invoking IHL, for acts that Israel is carrying out with an intent to destroy, Israel is attempting to distract the public’s attention from the main legal framework applicable to the situation in Gaza —the genocide framework. Israel’s widespread pattern of denial of civilians’ protection under IHL with blanket allegations of “shielding” only provides more evidence of genocidal intent, especially when added to Israeli statements.^[3] We concur with Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s assertion that Israel has sought to camouflage genocidal intent with humanitarian law jargon.^[4]

In light of the above, Al-Haq urgently calls on the relevant UN Special Procedures mandates to:

1. Publicly condemn Israel’s systematic use of Palestinians, especially children, as human shields to protect Israeli forces from hostile fire, which amounts to a war crime;

2. Publicly condemn Israel’s misinformation on the use of human shields by Palestinian resistance movement in the OPT;

3. Recognise and condemn Israel’s intention, through the rhetoric of human shields, to eradicate Palestinian presence from the OPT and commit the crime of genocide;

4. Call for an arms embargo on Israel, the immediate cessation of hostilities and full withdrawal of unlawful Israeli presence from Palestine

5. Call for international justice and accountability for genocide, including at the International Criminal Court, and before domestic courts by urging third States to activate universal jurisdiction mechanisms, for Israel’s prohibited use of human shields and deliberate destruction of the Palestinian people.

Please find the submission attached here.