*the UNRWA admitted that Hamas had taken over the schools for just such purposes.
Yet they do not lead to your conclusions. They condemn they found rockets in a vacant
school. You seem to be reaching for something more that will relieve Israel of responsibility
for the destruction listed in the OP I posted.
I would not count on that until all the inquiries are done. This is only a sample of what is
to come:
snip* But Hamas is to blame – right?
Israeli officials – military and otherwise – repeatedly state that the military is doing all it possibly can to minimize harm to civilians. However, they argue, Hamas is endangering the lives of the civilian population, and is therefore solely responsible for the consequences of Israel’s actions: people killed, injured or displaced, and homes and infrastructure ruined.
In this vein, in response to a joint letter by several human rights organizations, including B'Tselem, the Israeli Attorney General wrote on 5 August 2004 to Att. Tamar Feldman of Israeli NGO ACRI (Association for Civil Rights in Israel) that Israel is committed to upholding the law, but "terrorist organizations make cynical, criminal use of the civilian population as human shields in the face of IDF activity. In this reality, unfortunately, even legal, proportionate attacks carried out in keeping with international law may cause unintentional and unwanted harm to civilians and civilian property". Similarly, Israeli Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said in a press conference on 6 August 2014 that "the result in Gaza has been devastation, and the tragic blame lies with Hamas leaders, who operated from within concentrations of population".
Hamas did, indeed, violate international humanitarian law (IHL) during the fighting: its operatives fired at civilians and civilian locations within Israel, concealed weapons in civilian buildings and institutions in the Gaza Strip, and even fired from locations close to civilian structures or from within such structures. In doing so, Hamas endangered civilians within Gaza, forcing the civilian population to be a part of the sphere of fighting. Such conduct is unlawful, as B'Tselem has repeatedly stated and wishes to underscore once more.
However, Israel is wrong in shirking responsibility for the consequences of its actions and in laying them at Hamas' door. Israel and Hamas are each responsible for their own actions. The Israeli premise is faulty, on legal, factual and moral grounds:
From a legal standpoint, IHL – which stipulates rules of war for exactly such circumstances – actions during hostilities are not dependent on "reciprocity": one party's breach of the law does not give the other party carte blanche to do so. Israel is well aware of this issue. Therefore, along with depositing responsibility at Hamas’ doorstep, Israeli states it carefully abides by IHL. Those statements, however, issued by government and military officials, do not hold water:
Israel states that all the attacks on Gaza were only aimed at military targets – yet it defines "military target" so broadly that the term loses all meaning. In the last operation, the term came to encompass civilian buildings, such as the family homes of Hamas military operatives. This violates the fundamental IHL principle of distinction.
Israel states that all its strikes in Gaza were proportionate, and that the fact that civilians were killed does not in itself contradict that. Yet after dozens of strikes, each killing many uninvolved civilians, while Israel did not prove or even claim military gains significant enough to render such damage proportionate, this argument is no longer tenable. This conduct violates another central tenet of IHL – the principle of proportionality.
Israel states that the military warned residents in Gaza prior to attacks – but issuing warnings is not enough in itself. True, hundreds of thousands of Gazans – including children, the elderly and sick individuals – were given warning that they should leave their homes. Yet, if there is nowhere to go, when there in not always enough time to complete the evacuation, and when traveling is unsafe – as many Gazans reported in recent weeks – it is unreasonable to expect the entire civilian population to evacuate. Indeed, many civilians did not leave their homes, either for fear or because they could not. Under such circumstances, Israel should not have assumed that all civilians have indeed left their homes and fully heeded its warnings.
http://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20140811_a_death_foretold
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