内容摘要：As crowds grew restless while waiting in the heat, people began pushing forward, eventually breaking through the fences.

As crowds grew restless while waiting in the heat, people began pushing forward, eventually breaking through the fences.

Who issues the orders to use human shields?Despite vast evidence, the question of whether the military will be launching a crackdown aimed at banishing the apparently systematic practice is moot. Even so, pressure for accountability is growing.

Rights groups say the practice of using human shields has been going on in the occupied Palestinian territories for decades. Breaking the Silence, a whistle-blower group gathering testimonies of former Israeli soldiers, cites evidence of what one high-ranking officer posted to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank back in 2002 called “neighbour procedure”.“You order a Palestinian to accompany you and to open the door of the house you want to enter, to knock on the door and ask to enter, with a very simple objective: if the door blows up, a Palestinian will be blown up, and soldiers won’t be blown up,” said the officer, ranked as a major.In 2005, an Israeli Supreme Court ruling explicitly barred the practice. Five years later, two soldiers were convicted of using a nine-year-old boy as a human shield to check suspected booby traps in the Gaza City suburb of Tal al-Hawa.

It was reportedly the first such conviction in Israel.But the military’s use of human shields appears to have been normalised since then, particularly over the past 19 months of war in Gaza.

Indeed, there are indications that orders may be coming from the very top.

Haaretz’s investigation from last August cited sources as saying that former Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi was among the senior officers aware of the use of Palestinians in Gaza as human shields.“As all of the country’s talent pool and key infrastructure are staying within Seoul, the country needs to invest in developing our other major cities,” Park told Al Jazeera.

“For Sejong, this means combining with neighbouring Daejeon to become the nation’s centre for administration and research.”Park believes that the country’s five major cities outside the greater Seoul area should have at least 4 million residents to maintain healthy urbanisation.

Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city, has 3.26 million people. Last year, the Korea Employment Information Service officially categorised Busan as being at risk of extinction due to record-low birth rates and a declining young workforce.Population declines in regional parts of the country have been further exacerbated by internal migration to Seoul. More than 418,000 people moved to the capital region last year.