Human shield deters Israel strike

Well, there's a turn up for the books. This story normally follows a drearily familiar pattern.

Palestinians launch a rocket attack into Israel which is quickly followed by the Israelis telephoning a Palestinian militant and giving him ten minutes to leave his home, which they then attack with rockets claiming that the residence was used to "store missiles".

It's bread and butter stuff for the IDF. It's a crude form of revenge with a warning given in advance to prevent civilian casualties, but with the householder still suffering from the loss of their home even though the Israelis have no substantial intelligence that links the householder with the original rocket attack.

And that was the way it was supposed to play itself out yesterday.

One person was wounded in a Palestinian rocket attack on the Israeli town of Sderot.

Mohammedweil Baroud, a commander in the Popular Resistance Committees militant group, received the call from the Israeli forces ordering him to leave his home.

So far, we are running almost to script. But Baroud did not evacuate his home. Instead, he ran to a local mosque and summoned help to defend his house.

Hundreds of relatives and neighbours gathered at the house, where about 50 people reportedly climbed onto the roof. Others stood in the street chanting anti-Israeli and anti-American slogans.

And, miracle of miracles, the Israelis - faced with such a number of people forming a human shield around the property - had to call off their planned attack.

An Israeli military spokesman confirmed to Reuters news agency that the raid had been called off because of the Palestinian action.

"The attack plan was cancelled because of the people there," he said. "We differentiate between innocent people and terrorists."

He said Israel would continue its policy of targeted air strikes and accused militants of using the civilians in the camp as human shields.

There is no question that the people around the house were, indeed, human shields; however, it is unlikely that they were being "used" for such a purpose as opposed to having volunteered for the task.

And one is left questioning which is the greater evil here, using human shields or engaging in an act of collective punishment against a householder who had nothing to do with the rocket attack for which you are seeking revenge.

What is undeniable is that, having seen this tactic work once, it is certain to be repeated.

Following the protest, militant leaders urged Gazans to repeat the tactic in the face of future warnings by the Israeli air force.

"We call upon all the fighters to reject evacuating their houses and we urge our people to rush into the threatened houses and make human shields," said a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, quoted by Reuters.

There will be many who will condemn this latest Palestinian tactic and I fully expect the term human shield to become synonymous with Palestinian militant's barbarity.

However, an act like this reminds me of nothing more than the Indian civil disobedience movement, when the local population refused to stand by while the British Army engaged in brutal colonialism. In offering passive resistance, Gandhi and others forced the British to face the brutality of their occupation.

There will be many supporters of Israel who will argue that such people are endangering their own lives and deserve whatever happens to them, but such an argument only proves that occupation brutalises both the occupier and the occupied.

I think this latest act is the cleverest thing that the Palestinians have done in a long time to highlight the real problem in the Middle East. And that is the occupation.

By engaging in rocket attacks the Palestinians give the Israelis the excuse to present themselves as the victim rather than as the occupier. By using human shields, the Palestinians force the Israelis to make impossible choices. And such impossible choices grow from the barbarity of the act of occupation and from the occupied people's reaction to it.

An occupied people have a right to resist their occupiers. However, there are cleverer ways to resist occupation than firing rockets.

Gandhi managed to hold a mirror up to the British Empire and, in doing so, brought it to it's knees. Mandela's dignified suffering forced an Apartheid South African government to allow it's black population to vote - an act akin to turkeys voting for Xmas.

I have no great faith that the Palestinian leadership will be clever enough to see the opportunity that has just landed in their lap. But were they to seize it, they could seize the moral high ground and force the Israeli's to accept the immorality of their occupation.

A state of Palestine would be much easier to obtain through such passive resistance.

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