Before killing an 80-year-old Palestinian, Israeli forces used him as a human shield

According to Middle East Eye, the unnamed Palestinian man, who is thought to have been well over 80, was warned that Israeli forces would "blow off his head" and detonate the explosives if he did not conduct the searches.

The incident happened in May of last year when Israeli soldiers from multiple brigades gathered close to the home of the 80-year-old Palestinian couple in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, according to HaMakom.

After fierce combat with Hamas and other Palestinian movements, Israeli forces had at that point launched their third ground invasion of the region.

HaMakom said that the Nahal Brigade, the Carmeli Brigade and the Multidimensional Unit, decided to use the elderly Palestinian man, who used a walking stick to get around, as the human shield.

An Israeli soldier told HaMakom that after explosives were placed around the Palestinian man's neck, he was told "that if he does something wrong or not the way we want, the person behind him will pull the rope and his head will detach from the body."

"That's how he walked around with us for eight hours, even though he's an 80-year-old man and even though he couldn't run away from us. And that's knowing that there's a soldier behind him who can pull the rope at any second – and he's done," the soldier added.

According to HaMakom, after the elderly Palestinian was forced to enter homes and tunnel allegedly used by Hamas, the soldiers ordered him and his wife to leave the area for al-Mawasi, a small area that at the time was just 1km wide and was being used to house hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. "They died like that, in the street," another soldier told HaMakom.

'Mosquito protocol'

According to HaMakom the decision to use the elderly man as a human shield was part of a long-standing tactic called the "mosquito protocol" which involves Israeli soldiers ordering Palestinians to enter potentially booby-trapped locations - houses, tunnels, and other structures - ahead of the Israeli troops.

The scope and magnitude of these operations are unknown, but they have been used frequently in Gaza despite being prohibited by international law.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz claimed in August that during its war on Gaza, the Israeli army had frequently exploited defenseless Palestinians to break into tunnels and homes.

Many Palestinians testified to Israeli forces strapping explosives on civilians before forcing them into areas thought to be used by Hamas, as reported by Middle East Eye in December 2023, almost a year earlier.

When Israeli soldiers inspected the Shifa Hospital's grounds later that month, medical personnel told MEE that they were used as human shields.

"They used us [doctors] as human shields to enter and search the ground stores when they stormed them. Before detaining the technical maintenance staff, they discovered them there and questioned them", a doctor told MEE.