The IDF's human shields

The IDF then ordered him to break into a neighboring house with a sledgehammer. The two houses were connected by a shared wall along the roof. The house had been vacant for several years, according to Abd Rabbo; it was owned by a man who was working in the Sudan.

Once Abd Rabbo broke down the wall, Israeli soldiers forced him into the house ahead of them. The soldiers heard movement, fired several shots, and then fled - with Abd Rabbo - to a neighboring mosque. They called in artillery fire on the houses from there.

The soldier said that they had killed the fighters inside the house and told him to go into the house and come back with their clothes and weapons. He protested, saying that he just wanted to find out if his family was safe. The officer told him to obey their orders if he wanted to see his family again. He refused to go, and was kicked and beaten by soldiers with their weapons until he gave in. (p. 283)

Abd Rabbo entered the house, yelling "I'm a Palestinian!", and found three Islamic Jihad fighters inside - he identified them by their headbands. The men sent him back to the IDF; he told them what he saw, and the soldiers threatened to kill him if he was lying.

The IDF bombed the house again - it's unclear whether this was an airstrike or artillery fire - and then sent Abd Rabbo to check on the fighters. He found one man wounded and the other two unharmed.

This process repeated itself several times until the neighbor's house - and Abd Rabbo's - were almost entirely destroyed on Jan. 9. The IDF finally ordered him to walk to Jabaliyah, where he reunited with his family, which had fled to a relative's house several days prior.

Majdi Abd Rabbo told the Mission that he and his family were traumatized by what had happened to them and did not know what to do now, having lost their home and all their possessions. His children were all suffering psychologically and performing poorly at school. Five months later, in June 2009, Majdi Abd Rabbo was still having nightmares. (p. 287)

Three similar stories

The mission recounts several similar stories. There's Abbas Ahmad Ibrahim Halawa, a 59-year-old asthmatic who was forced to conduct house-to-house searches for several hours. He didn't find anything in the houses. Afterwards, he says, he was transported to Nitzarim and held for two days, where Israeli soldiers beat him and interrogated him about the location of Hamas fighters and smuggling tunnels.

Halawa suffered two fractured vertebrae from the beatings, according to medical reports reviewed by the mission.

Mahmoud Abd Rabbo al-Ajrami, a former assistant foreign minister, was detained around midnight on Jan. 10. Soldiers accused him of being a Hamas member, beat him, and forced him to conduct house-to-house searches with his neighbor, Mr. Halawa. (Al-Ajrami is a member of Fatah, and he resigned his position several years ago after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip.)

He was then detained for several days; al-Ajrami suffered four fractured ribs and a bruised leg from beatings during his detention. He was then forced to walk to Gaza City after his release. When he returned home after the war, he found his house vandalized.

A third man is identified only as AD/03. He was evacuated from his neighborhood in Jabaliyah with dozens of other men and ordered to strip and stand against a wall for 15 minutes. Then the men were forced to conduct house-to-house searches for several hours. They found nothing.

IDF denies the reports

The IDF didn't respond to questions about these incidents from the U.N. mission - didn't respond to any requests from the mission, in fact. But the mission quotes an IDF spokesman who denied the reports of human shields in an interview with Ha'aretz's Amira Hass in February.

The IDF is a moral army and its soldiers operate according to the spirit and values of the IDF, and we suggest a thorough examination of the allegations of Palestinian elements with vested interests. The IDF troops were instructed unequivocally not to make use of the civilian population within the combat framework for any purpose whatsoever, certainly not as "human shields." (p. 293)

Goldstone rejects his denial, concluding that the witnesses interviewed in this section were credible. The report also cites testimony from several soldiers interviewed by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO. The soldiers confirmed that they used human shields - one of them even confirmed Majdi Abd Rabbo's specific account.

The report concludes that these actions are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Israeli High Court, in fact, issued a similar verdict in 2002 when it ruled on the IDF's "early warning" procedure (using civilians to look for bombs and other traps).

The report also condemns Israeli soldiers for issuing death threats to the prisoners being used as human shields. It notes that there is no evidence soldiers ever followed through on their death threats - but many prisoners were beaten, some of them severely.