Stripped and held at gunpoint, the Gaza schoolboys ‘forced to be Israel’s human shields’

Sobbing and terrified, the 12-year-old Palestinian schoolboy says Israeli soldiers ordered him and his cousins to strip down to their underwear, before forcing them at gunpoint to act as “human shields”.

It was late December 2023 in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City that had become an epicentre of Israel’s ferocious assault on the strip, following Hamas’s 7 October attacks. After the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for the area, the male members of the families who lived in the same building left under heavy fire, searching for shelter.

That left only the women and children, cowering in their homes when a dozen soldiers raided the building, Shadi, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, tells The Independent.

“We were so scared when they entered, we were screaming as we tried to run from room to room to hide,” says the seventh-grade student, now 13 years old, who still has vivid nightmares that soldiers will take him, and is often too scared to go to the toilet on his own.

“They took a group of us, me and my cousins, blindfolded us and tied our hands. I was terrified. I was shaking with fear. My mother was crying but couldn’t do anything. They were standing over us with their guns.”

By phone, The Independent spoke to two of the boys, who were aged between 11 and 16 years old, and their parents, who say they were beaten, threatened with dogs and stripped to their boxer shorts despite the freezing winter conditions.

“They took us and put us on the road in front of their vehicles and then asked us if we knew any of the [Palestinian militants] to tell them we are here,” says another of the boys, Ahmed, whose name has also been changed.

Ahmed, Shadi’s 16-year-old cousin, says the boys were beaten multiple times and attacked with the dogs before being forced to walk in front of the soldiers, sweeping the houses looking for militants from Gaza’s armed factions.

“We were blindfolded and our hands were tied behind our backs. They were pushing us to go here, saying go right, go left, open this door, go in there,” Shadi continues.

“We were so scared that we might be killed at any second. They were beating us with their weapons telling us to keep moving.” When asked about these testimonies, the Israeli military said “the orders and directives of the IDF prohibit the use of Gazan civilians captured in the field for military missions that endanger them”.

But a third civilian The Independent interviewed, a 20-year-old internally displaced man from north Gaza, describes being arbitrarily detained alongside more than a dozen Palestinians in June, and says he was forced to inspect houses and roads over 15 “missions” during a two-week period. He says he was nearly killed as he was forced to wear an Israeli military uniform and a camera on his chest, and so narrowly escaped being shot by the Palestinian side.

He describes how, in groups of two or three, Palestinian civilians would be forced to sweep houses and roads, searching for tunnels, 100m in front of the soldiers, who directed them via microphone on military quadcopters.

‘It is happening everywhere’

The use of civilians as human shields by military forces is prohibited in the Geneva Conventions and is a war crime.

“‘Human shielding’ refers to purposefully using the presence of civilians to render military forces or areas immune from attack,” explains Belkis Wille, of Human Rights Watch.

“The laws of war prohibit using civilians to shield military objectives, including individual combatants, from attack.”

When contacted by The Independent, the Israeli military said the claims of the use of human shields had been forwarded for examination by the relevant authorities, without elaborating any further. They declined to comment on whether there would be a specific investigation into the use of children. Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza, of using human shields.

Israel has launched its heaviest-ever bombardment of Gaza and instigated a crippling siege, in retaliation for bloody attacks on southern Israel by Hamas militants who killed more than 1,000 people and took more than 250 hostage, according to Israeli accounts.

Since then Palestinian health authorities say Israel’s bombing campaign and ground incursion has killed more than 40,000 people with as many as 10,000 more bodies buried under rubble.

The United Nations has reported that Israel has arbitrarily held thousands of Palestinians, including medical staff, patients and residents fleeing the conflict, as well as captured fighters. Many have been subjected to torture and mistreatment.

The Independent’s interviews match testimony from veterans of the war given to Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO of former soldiers that documents military abuses.

Breaking the Silence says its research shows the use of human shields is not limited to a few isolated incidents or a commander acting on a whim. “The testimonies make it clear that it’s both systemic and systematic to how the IDF is fighting in Gaza,” a recent statement said.

“Our first testifier reported that they had used the human shield procedure in December – the last one was a couple of weeks ago, it is happening everywhere among normal infantry units, not just special forces,” says Nadav Weiman, a former Israeli soldier and deputy director of Breaking the Silence.

Describing it as a “broadly used procedure”, he says the testimonies they have point to a pattern of Palestinians being rounded up at checkpoints in humanitarian corridors or while they are on the move fleeing areas.

“Since October 7 all the brakes are off. The way the Israeli military is operating inside Gaza – with commands we didn’t think we would ever hear – is amplified and on steroids,” he adds.

“It is part of dehumanising Gazans for so many years: a belief that the soldier’s life is more important than the civilians ‘of the enemy’.”

‘Handcuffed, blindfolded and beaten’

The news outlet Al Jazeera broadcast footage of Palestinians, including some in military uniform, being sent into destroyed buildings in July. Israeli newspaper Haaretz also documented the same practice, with soldiers even giving the Palestinians forced to do this the nickname “shawish”, a colloquial term meaning sergeant. Mohammed, 20, who was forced to flee the Jabalia camp in the north of Gaza, tells The Independent he was arbitrarily detained by the military in June for seven weeks, and during that period was used as a human shield on 15 separate occasions.

He says he was arrested by Israeli soldiers from south Gaza where he had gone to buy goods in order to sell them and support his family. That day he says the army rounded up and arrested over a dozen Palestinian men, including Mohammed. They were handcuffed, blindfolded and, he says, denied access to proper food for the first three days.

“After an investigation, they took us to a large army camp in the Philadelphi axis, under threat and beating, for two weeks,” he continues, referring to the border regions between Gaza and Egypt which the Israeli military forces now control. At one point soldiers even urinated on them, he says.

Then they were set to work.

”They made us wear cameras and army clothes – we were accompanied by quadcopters on every mission, which directed us via microphone.

“The army would stay 100m away from us. They gave us wire cutters to open houses, and we received orders to lift the carpet, for example, or the bed, especially on the ground floor, in case there were tunnels.”

He says they were usually only fed bread, but on “mission days” were given a can of tuna as well. His last “mission” was at the beginning of August when he says soldiers woke him up at 5am, beat him and then forced him to photograph a tank the army had abandoned.

He initially refused but was forced at gunpoint to move forward, when he hesitated he says he was shot in the chest, which left him with a serious lung injury and fractured ribs.

He eventually fainted and woke up in a military hospital in the south of Israel. Shortly afterwards he was released back into Gaza.

‘I dream that soldiers are coming to take me’

The boys in Gaza City say they were used for half a day and were eventually dumped in another part of Gaza City when the soldiers had finished with them. They walked in the middle of the fighting to Shifaa Hospital – the largest medical facility in Gaza City – and asked for help. Eventually, they were taken back to their terrified families.

“My parents were so scared when we were taken and they had heard nothing. My mother was so happy when I came back,” Ahmed continues.

Shadi says it took him a full month to “understand what happened to me”. His father, who also spoke to The Independent by phone, says his son is struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I was going to the bathroom all the time, I was so scared to go on my own. I dream that soldiers are coming to take me and hit me,” Shadi says, adding that all he can do now is pray for a ceasefire.

“My message is that I hope that the war will finish, so I can be happy and free.”