Israeli officials told the Haaretz newspaper that a military investigation concluded that an Israeli mortar shell, despite having a guidance system, was 30 yards off its target when it hit near a United Nations school, killing as many as 43 Palestinians.
Two other mortars hit their target, a Hamas cell that had fired mortars at Israeli troops, killing at least two of the fighters, the army said.
An initial effort to use an even more precise weapon failed because of a malfunction, the army told Haaretz. The army appeared to drop its contention that the Hamas mortars came from within the school compound, but said instead that the mortars were from an adjacent area.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
In the old Watergate-sense, their previous statement is no longer "operative." But why should their current "30 yard" claim be given any credence as well. Once you attempt to coverup by lie, any further assertions should be taken with a grain of salt. It's true regarding the "fog of war," but this has become a pattern over several of these military actions, such as the firing on UN personnel in Lebanon in '06.
The Times article goes on to point out further human rights concerns being expressed:
Fred Abrahams, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, who has studied both the Kosovo and Lebanon conflicts, said he was concerned that Israel was not paying enough attention to international legal requirements for "distinction and proportionality — first, to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and second, whether an attack will have a disproportionate effect on the civilians in the area."
Even if a target is legitimate, he said, "you can’t drop a 500-pound bomb in an area crowded with civilians."
This was also the first conflict he could remember when civilians could not flee the war zone. Gaza’s borders are shut both to Israel and to Egypt, and civilians, he said, "are fish in a barrel."
. . . .
Human rights groups are also concerned about the Israeli use of white phosphorous, which creates smoke on a battlefield, at low altitudes or crowded areas, because it can burn like a kind of napalm.