Produced by the Research Journalism Initiative (RJI) and the anarchist film collective “a-films“.
AP, NABLUS, WEST BANK, 27 February 2007
Soldiers moved from door to door, entering homes in search of suspects, concentrating on the Old City, a section of rundown buildings and narrow alleyways.
At one point, a small group of nervous soldiers forced a Palestinian youth to lead them into a home. The soldiers then took him, along with several young Palestinian men, into a military vehicle.
Israel’s Supreme Court in 2005 banned the practice of using Palestinian civilians as “human shields” to search homes for explosives or militants ahead of soldiers. The army had no immediate comment on Sunday’s incident.
death, destruction, racism, flowers
At one point a group of eight soldiers walked passed us, guns aimed in every direction, accompanied by an older Palestinian man. I couldn’t figure out what the Palestinian man was doing with them because he didn’t appear to be under arrest. I asked one of the UPMRC volunteers who explained to me that the man had whispered to him that he was a human shield. He’d been “kidnapped” since 4am that morning and was forced to accompany the soldiers as they patrolled the streets so that Palestinian fighters would not shoot at the soldiers. You know this happens, you read about it but nothing prepares you for the shock and disgust of actually seeing it yourself. We made some phone calls to Israeli human rights organizations. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the use of civilians as human shields in military operations. At this point I start to wonder if anyone cares if a father of five who sells vegetables in the market during the day is being used as a human shield in a military operation.