By Gideon Levy
When it was all over, the soldiers gave her a cookie and some halva. And just to be on the safe side, they added a threat: "Don't you dare tell your parents; otherwise we'll kill you," they told her before letting her go, knowing they had done a terrible thing. But little Jihan did tell, and so did her parents: The IDF is using children as human shields.
Regarding this practice, known as "early warning" or the "neighbor procedure," then Supreme Court president Aharon Barak wrote in October 2005: "These considerations lead me to the conclusion that the 'Early Warning' procedure is at odds with international law. It comes too close to the normative 'nucleus' of the forbidden, and is found in the relatively grey area of the improper. The result is that we turn the order nisi into an order absolute, in the following way: we declare that the 'Early Warning' procedure contradicts international law." Thus the practice was declared illegal, banned by the Supreme Court. But so what? Instead of using men, how about a little girl? The "neighbor procedure" is prohibited? So we'll use the "neighbor's daughter procedure."
Jihan Dadush, 11, who lived in the Nablus casbah, was rewarded with halva and a cookie after soldiers had her leave her house early one evening and lead them to the hiding place of wanted suspects, enter a dark and abandoned apartment to check if anyone was hiding there or if there were any explosive devices inside. They did the same thing with Amid Amira, a 15-year-old boy from another part of Nablus. He, too, was sent into a dark apartment, at dawn, to scout out the place himself. Arfa Amira, 12, was sent in to investigate who was in his own apartment. Instead of the famous "After me!" ethos of the IDF heritage, now we have "After her!" - a young girl led off by armed soldiers who hide behind her.
We walk through the alley-ways of the Old City of Nablus - thousand-year-old buildings whose beauty rivals those in Jerusalem's Old City - with two excellent investigators from the B'Tselem organization, Salma Dab'i and Abdel Karim Sa'adi. Two weeks after the operation, the casbah is full of people. Now is the time of the 'aqub, a plant that grows in the mountains and has a very short season. Its price is already on the rise: This week it was selling in the casbah for NIS 25 per kilo - the truffles of Nablus.
Passing stands that sell grape leaves and lamb ribs, we enter a dim stone building. In its inner courtyard, where woolen blankets are now being aired out, 14 people were killed during Operation Defensive Shield. Five years later, in Operation Warm Winter, four times soldiers have raided this winding, mysterious compound, with its narrow staircases leading off in every direction. Only the locals really know these alleyways and the passages between them. The soldiers were searching for tunnels here, but in the Old City of Nablus, one can pass from building to building via the rooftops.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/838256.html
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