http://www.jpost.com/...
"The IDF inquiry into the Kana incident in which civilians were killed as a building collapsed released its final conclusions Thursday morning.
Two missiles, the only one of which exploded, hit the building on July 30. The army said that they had operated according to information that 'the building was not inhabited by civilians and was being used as a hiding place for terrorists.' Had they known that civilians were in the building, the attack would not have been carried out."
"The IDF spokesperson noted that the building had been targeted only after residents had been warned to evacuate through various media, and that the building was adjacent to areas from which rockets had been launched towards Israel. Other buildings in the area had been targeted with no civilian casualties.
On Wednesday, both the Lebanese Health Ministry and the Human Rights Watch said that they could confirm only 28 of the originally reported 57 civilians who died in the building. Of the 28 that they confirmed, 16 were children. There have been claims on an anti-Syrian Lebanese Web site and various weblogs that Hizbullah 'staged' the tragedy, bringing in dead bodies or live disabled children who would be killed in an Israeli bombing after seeing the rocket launchers.
Paul Conneally, the Irish national who is deputy head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Israel and the Palestinian Authority and is the person assigned to deal with Lebanese matters, said he could not say exactly how many bodies were taken out and how many died there. He had no information about whether anyone had autopsied the bodies to determine the causes of death."
***
Is it possible for Israel to act more carefully than it has? I do not ask this rhetorically, but in earnest desire for an answer.
I am inclined to think the Israeli military follows its sense of humanity beyond its own self-interest. By dropping pamphlets, making announcements and phone calls, and then waiting for civilians to evacuate before attacking, Israel warns its enemies and allows them time to prepare. As a result, Israel's enemies have time to take up better defensive positions and to devise plans of counter-attack.
In effect, Israel is trading the blood of its own young soldiers for the safety of Lebanese civilians, and reducing the chance of reaching its military goal.
Was Qana a set-up by Hezbollah? It is not clear we will ever know. But it does seem that Israel took every step possible against causing civilian deaths in this instance.
Weighing Israel's willingness to sacrifice its own sons to save the lives of strangers, and Hezbollah's willingness to sacrifice its own neighbors in order to turn public opinion against Israel, it is not going too far to wonder whether this was not an accident but murder... by Hezbollah.