How Israeli Soldiers Disguise Themselves as Civilians to Kill Palestinians, a Brief History
This is a brief history of Israel’s use of perfidy, 1967-present.
Israeli soldiers, disguised as medical staff, raided a hospital in the West Bank, killing 3 Palestinians. Source (January 31, 2024)
Palestinian resistance groups are constantly accused of “hiding behind civilians.” Yet the record shows that it’s Israeli soldiers who frequently disguise themselves as civilians to kill Palestinians. Perfidy, or feigning civilian status as a combatant during armed hostilities, is prohibited under customary international law, but it’s also a beloved tactic of the Israeli army. This is a brief history of Israel’s use of perfidy, 1967-present.
In June 2024, Israel carried out the deadliest operation of perfidy in its history. Israeli soldiers disguised in Palestinian civilian garb, including an aid truck, infiltrated the Nuseirat camp in a botched operation that killed at least 274 Palestinians and wounded nearly 700. They also possibly killed a number of Israeli hostages — while rescuing four (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
The US government and mainstream media hailed the operation as a “daring” success even though it was a flagrant violation of international law. Even if the rescue operation had saved all the hostages without harming any Palestinians, Israel soldiers feigned status as civilians and aid workers during a military operation, a textbook case of perfidy.
The operation was unique in its kill count but standard operating procedure for the Israeli military. In January 2025, Israeli soldiers hid in a civilian vehicle to arrest a Palestinian man in the West Bank. In December 2024, Israeli soldiers hid in an ambulance and feigned status as emergency health workers to kill 2 Palestinians in the Balata refugee camp. In January 2024, Israeli soldiers wearing doctors’ scrubs and women’s clothes entered a hospital in Jenin and killed 3 Palestinians. These are but a few of the more recent documented cases of Israeli perfidy.
True to its reputation as a “start-up nation,” Israel is innovating in its perfidious tactics. On April 14-15, 2024, Israeli quadcopters circled around the Nuseirat refugee camp playing recordings of crying infants to lure concerned refugees into death traps. When Palestinians went outside looking for the crying babies, Israeli quadcopters shot at them (1, 2, 3). "We heard the voices of girls and women screaming: 'Come, help me, I am injured!' We went out to find out what was happening… and we were directly targeted by a quadcopter drone," said a 20-year-old resident of the displacement camp. Israel is automating perfidy.
It’s part of what Antony Loewenstein calls the “Palestine Laboratory,” in which Palestinians serve as unwilling subjects in experiments in Gaza to generate great value propositions like “battle-tested” for Israel’s arms industry. Call it killer marketing copy.
Israel’s use of perfidious tactics has a long history. In the 1970s and 1980s, Israeli spies planted bombs in telephones, beds and cars to kill Palestinian combatants. They also planted poison in chocolate goodies, disguising their weapons of war in mundane objects of civilian life.
By the 1980s, Israel expanded its surveillance of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1986, the Israeli military established a unit called "Duvdevan," dedicated to perfidy. The selection process to join the unit weeded out 99 of every 100 Israeli teens, and its aurora is glorified in Israel’s most popular drama series. For Israel, perfidy is not a breach of international humanitarian law — it's a point of national pride.
The practice became especially important after the Oslo Process in 1993, 1994 and 1995, when the Israeli military was no longer allowed to operate openly in Palestinian urban centers. Key word, of course, openly, since although these areas now fell under Palestinian Authority “security” jurisdiction, Israel continued to carry out security operations.
Israel expanded unit Duvdevan, training more and more soldiers to become intimately acquainted with local Palestinian traditions, dialects, manners of speech, family clans and topography. They learned to hide in and amongst Palestinian civilians in order to surveil, kidnap and kill them.
By 1997, the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem said that Israel had killed 161 Palestinians in undercover ambushes carried out by the Israeli military. And so while Israeli leaders talked about building trust in the Palestinians in public, the government doubled down on a policy built on undermining it.
By the 2000s and 2010s, Israeli soldiers were carrying out operations disguised as civilians almost daily. In 2015, for instance, 21 Israeli soldiers dressed in civilian clothing entered the al-Ahli hospital in Hebron and killed a 28-year-old Palestinian man, and shot his cousin multiple times in the head and body. The Israeli military itself reported in 2018 the Duvdevan unit executed more than three-hundred operations in which they disguised themselves as civilians, including abducting wanted persons, intelligence gathering and weapon confiscation and execution.
In 2018, Israeli forces disguised as Palestinian aid workers carried out a botched operation in Gaza in which they killed 7 Palestinians. One of the Israeli soldiers feigned status as a Portuguese national posing as a humanitarian worker, according to reports. The Israeli spies had rented a building from a local police officer and tried to assimilate into the population in the Gaza Strip, but when their true identities were revealed, the Israeli military went on a killing spree to save them.
Some perfidious operations involve years of planning, such as the September 2024 pager operation in which Israel planted bombs in civilian objects like pagers and walkie talkies used by Hezbollah members, killing 12 civilians in Lebanon. “Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps, objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use,” according to Human Rights Watch analyst, Lama Fakih. She added, the use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known, and could explode in crowded grocery stores, clinics or a child’s hands “would be unlawfully indiscriminate.”
The laws of war are meant to protect civilians. And so by feigning status as Palestinian civilians, doctors and aid workers, Israel puts the lives of all Palestinians in danger. It sows seeds of mistrust and thrusts civilians into the line of fire. It invites confidence but quickly betrays it, eroding the entire system designed to protect non-combatants. Alas, it also shows the true colors of the state: a regional power backed by world superpowers — feigning status as a baby crying for help to draw unsuspecting Palestinian civilians into a death trap.
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