Middle East Conflict

Hamas is exploiting civilians as human shields. Click here to read a study and learn how Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the Gaza strip make extensive use of Palestinian civilians as human shields.

It shows how the terrorist organizations constructed a vast military infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, including a large arsenal of rocket and mortar shells used to target the southern Israeli population. The terrorists’ military infrastructure was hidden in and around civilian homes and dispersed to locations scattered around the Gaza Strip, home to an estimated more than 1.4 million people, one of the most densely populated areas on earth.

The calculated, cynical use of the civilian population as human shields is intended to decrease the vulnerability of Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist organizations by affording them a kind of immunity from the IDF’s counterterrorism activities, since they are aware that Israel avoids harming the civilian population insofar as is possible. It is also intended to make it possible for Hamas and the other terrorist organizations to make political-propaganda gains in the battle for hearts and minds by representing Israel as operating against innocent civilians.

The main findings are the following:
i) Military and security personnel, facilities and installations are situated within dense population concentrations (including residential dwellings and public institutions, such as schools, mosques and hospitals).
ii) Rockets and mortar shells are fired at Israeli population centers.
iii) The terrorists fight against the IDF from within residences and public institutions, and use ambulances to evacuate terrorist operatives from the battlefield.
iv) Civilians, including women and children, are deliberately used as human shields to protect terrorist operatives whose houses the organizations fear may be attacked by the IDF.
v) The terrorists hold military training, exercises and shows of fighting.
vi) Women and children are used as human shields