The Star-Ledger · Newark, New Jersey · 20 November 2006
CP-2006-003
Palestinian human shields thwart Israeli airstrikes on Gaza homes
Sarah El Deeb, The Associated Press, Beit Lahiya
Transcribed from the clipping
“BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip — Hundreds of Palestinians serving as human shields guarded the homes of two top militants yesterday, a new tactic that forced Israel to call off missile strikes on the buildings and re-evaluate a mainstay of its aerial campaign in Gaza.
In recent months, the Israeli air force has repeatedly struck the homes of militants after warning residents by phone to clear out. Israeli security officials said they did not know how to respond to the human shield tactic, but pressed ahead with other airstrikes yesterday.
In Gaza City, an aircraft fired a missile at a car, killing one man and wounding nine, including two Hamas militants.
Four of the wounded were children, ages 5 to 16, who suffered shrapnel injuries, hospital officials said… The standoff over the homes of the militants began late Saturday when Mohammed Baroud, local leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, was informed by the army that his house would be hit.
The three-story building is home to 17 people from Baroud’s family… Instead of fleeing, though, the two decided to stay in their homes and called in reinforcements. They were quickly joined by crowds of supporters, including dozens of armed men, who gathered on balconies, rooftops and in the streets outside.
‘Death to Israel, Death to America,’ the crowds chanted… The army said it called off the nighttime airstrikes because of the crowds. It condemned what it said was a cynical exploitation ‘by the terrorists of uninvolved people as human shields.’
Israeli military officials acknowledged they had no solution for the standoff… Baroud’s mother, Umm Wael, said shifts had been organized in preparation for a long standoff. ‘Where should we go?’ she said. ‘We will stay here or die in the house.
Let them bring it down on our heads.’… Also yesterday, Hamas militants in Gaza fired eight rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot, seriously wounding one person.”
Context added by this archive
The pivot. The Associated Press calls it a new tactic, the shields are volunteers, and the Israeli army supplies the sentence in which the same words mean the opposite.
Cite this clipping
"Palestinian human shields thwart Israeli airstrikes on Gaza homes," The Star-Ledger, 20 November 2006, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2006-003. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2006-003
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2006-003.
Read in: How “human shields” changed sides in three years
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