[Blog] Gaza Genocide: the Mosquito Protocol

The Mosquito Protocol is a term that describes an egregious practice by Israeli soldiers using Palestinian civilians as human shields or forcing them to perform dangerous tasks on their behalf. This is rarely evoked in the Western media in which the common narrative is that it is Hamas per se which is guilty of such practices.

However, whistle-blowers and organisations such as Breaking the Silence, composed of former Israeli soldiers, have confirmed that this method is commonly used by the Israeli army. In fact, it started much before the Gaza Genocide and was widely utilized in the West Bank. At that time it was called “Neighbour Procedure or Johnnie Procedure”. What is really revolting is that in many cases it is children who, under threats and beatings, have been forced to serve as human shields. They are compelled to enter buildings or rooms suspected of being booby-trapped, forced to inspect suspicious packages or “remove pipe bombs and suspected explosives”.

Other inhuman examples involve “tying a child to the front of a military vehicle, forcing a child to walk directly in front of a tank column”. B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, and Defense for Children International have documented many such cases. In April 2004, for example, a 13-year-old boy named Mohammed Bedwan was photographed “tied by the hands to the front of an Israeli armoured vehicle” in the village of Biddu in the West Bank.

In May 2023, 16-year-old Ahed Mohammad Rida Mer’eb was “forced to stand in front of an Israeli military vehicle in Jenin while Palestinian militants were firing at the Israeli soldiers”. In 2009, 3 teenage brothers from the Al Attar family were compelled under gunpoint to “kneel in front of tanks to deter militants from firing”. In the same vein, 2 IDF staff sergeants forced at gunpoint 9-year-old Majed R. from Al Hawa neighborhood to “open bags they suspected were booby-trapped with explosives”. This is the height of cowardice and inhumanity. So callous, so inhuman. Imagine the agony of the parents who are forced to witness the ordeal of their children risking being blown into pieces at any moment.

The practice is so heinous that even the Israeli High Court of Justice banned it in a landmark judgement in October 2005. The above examples, however, highlight that the judgement remained only a piece of paper and the Israeli soldiers continued to use civilians, especially children under beatings and abject threats, as human shields. In fact, with the Gaza war, the practice has been exacerbated and morphed into what is known as the “Mosquito Protocol”.

Several cases of cuffed or tracked “teenagers forced to do ‘tunnel sweeping and reconnaissance of the terrain’” have been widely documented by Defense for Children International. One particular example is that of September 2024 during the siege of Al Shifa Hospital. Young children were compelled to walk directly in front of tanks and bulldozers while soldiers hid behind. One traumatized boy reported that “the army told us to walk in front of tanks and stop at every building they were searching”.

How widespread is this heinous practice within the Israeli army is revealed in a documentary of The Guardian and Times of Israel entitled: “Breaking Ranks: inside Israel's war” (November 2025). In it, one commander named Daniel explicitly detailed one of the techniques used: “You send the human shield (nicknamed derogatorily as Mosquito, wasp or ‘shawish’) underground. He has an iPhone in his vest and as he walks, it sends back GPS information”. He added, “Other commanders saw how it works and the practice spread like wildfire. Every company began operating its own mosquitoes”.

Evidently, all these practices are banned under international law and are subsumed as war crimes as per the Rome Statute which established the International Criminal Court.

Mauritius, being a party to the Rome Statute, is under obligation to take legal action, under the principle of universal jurisdiction, against anyone involved in such crimes if they enter the Mauritian territory and are identified as such. This has happened in a number of countries, the most recent being in Czech Republic and Morocco.

Azize Bankur