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The Israeli army has been using abducted Palestinian civilians as human shields in Gaza, an investigation by Ha'aretz has said, adding to previous allegations of a similar nature from Palestinian and Israeli sources.

The civilians, who the soldiers refer to as shawish, or 'sergeant' in Arabic, are used by the army to carry out dangerous search operations while dressed in Israeli army uniform, according to soldiers who spoke to the Israeli news outlet.

Soldiers deployed to Gaza who spoke to Haaretz said they were told it was preferable for a Palestinian to be killed by a booby trap bomb than an Israeli soldier.

In some instances, children and elderly people were abducted and forced to search tunnels for the army.

"There were times when really old people were made to go into houses," one soldier said. 

Another soldier, who said that reports on Israel's use of human shields by outlets like Al Jazeera reflected their experience, recounted an instance when a 16-year-old was abducted by the army and forced to search a tunnel. While some civilians were detained for a day to be used for searches, some were kept for 

"About five months ago, two Palestinians were brought to us. One was 20 and the other was 16. We were told: 'Use them, they're Gazans, use them as human shields," the soldier said.

In July, leaked footage obtained by Al Jazeera showed Israeli soldiers forcing a Palestinian man, who was stripped down to his underwear and had his hands tied behind his back, to search for explosives at a site in Gaza.

A month earlier, footage also emerged of a wounded Palestinian man who had been strapped to the front of an Israeli military vehicle during a raid on the West Bank city of Jenin.

There are hundreds of other eyewitness testimonies of Palestinians being used as human shields by Israeli forces, including those by Israeli human rights monitor B'tselem.

Israeli army sources allege that the issue was regularly discussed by senior Israeli army heads, including Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi.

"The head of Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, knows too," a source at the army's Southern Command told Haaretz. "In every meeting where this issue was raised, there were commanders who warned about the ethical and legal implications if the matter was exposed publicly.

There were officers who asked that the meeting be halted so that they would be allowed to leave."

The practice, which is a war crime under international law, was previously addressed by the army when it was found that human shields were used in the West Bank during the Second Intifada.

Following a petition from rights groups, Israel's Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the practice was illegal.