On 6 October 2005, Israel's High Court of Justice ruled that it was illegal for the army to use Palestinian civilians during military actions. The judgment was given on a petition that B'Tselem and six other human rights organizations filed in 2002. The petition followed the army's use of Palestinian civilians as human shields since the beginning of the second intifada, primarily during operations carried out in densely populated Palestinian areas, as occurred in Operation Defensive Shield.

The method was the same each time: soldiers picked a civilian at random and forced him to protect them with his body, and do dangerous tasks for them. For example, soldiers have ordered Palestinians to:

• enter buildings to check if they are booby-trapped, or to remove the occupants;
• remove suspicious objects from roads;
• stand inside houses where soldiers set up military positions, so that Palestinians would not fire at them;
• and walk in front of soldiers to shield them from gunfire, while the soldiers point a gun to their backs and sometimes fire over their shoulders.

The soldiers in the field did not initiate this practice; rather, the order to use civilians as a means of protection was made by senior army officials.

In August 2002, Nidal Abu Mheisen, a 19-year-old Palestinian from Tubas, was killed by Palestinian gunfire when soldiers forced him to serve as a human shield.