In Opapo village, residents are troubled by the deaths

Earlier this year, Israeli newspaper Haaretz published the first-hand testimony of an Israeli soldier who said that the practice had been used “six times a day” in his unit and that it had effectively been “normalised” in military ranks.Back in August, the newspaper had revealed that Palestinians used as human shields in Gaza tended to be in their 20s and were used for periods of up to a week by units, which took pride in “locating” detainees to send into tunnel shafts and buildings.

“It’s become part of [Israel’s] military culture,” said Nicola Perugini, co-author of Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire, noting the “huge archive” of evidence provided, not only by human rights groups, but also by soldiers, who were until recently posting evidence of Palestinians being used as “fodder” on social media with an apparent sense of total impunity.“Israeli army investigations have proven throughout the decades to be non-investigations,” Perugini said, noting that documentation of the practice, forbidden by Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions, started during the second Intifada of the early 2000s.“What we have now in the live-streamed genocide is the most documented archive of human shielding in the history of the different wars between Israel and the Palestinians,” he said.

“What we have discovered is precisely that it is a systematic practice.”How has Israel responded to allegations?

Throughout the conflict, the Israeli military’s response to allegations has been to withhold comment, to point to a lack of details, or, when faced with undeniable proof, to announce a probe.

Last year, Israel declined to respond to a range of allegations put to it by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, which examined thousands of photos and videos – the bulk of them posted online by Israeli soldiers – and testimonies pointing to a number of potential war crimes, including the use of human shields.“It will deprive a large part of Gaza, the highly vulnerable people, of desperately needed assistance,” he said.

He added, “We used to have, before, 400 distribution places, centres in Gaza. With this new system, we are talking about three to four, maximum, distribution places.“So it’s also a way to incite people to be forcibly displaced to get humanitarian assistance,” he said.

As a trickle of aid has resumed, Israeli forces – now in control of wide areas of Gaza – have kept up their offensive, killing 3,901 Palestinians since a short ceasefire collapsed in mid-March, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.At least eight people were killed and others were wounded early on Wednesday when Israeli forces targeted the home of journalist Osama al-Arbid, who reportedly survived the strike in the as-Saftawi area in northern Gaza.