Israel’s own records support the IDF’s claim that Hamas fights from civilian sites with a map and with cases, not with a count: an IDF presentation plots 3 kinds of military site across the Khan Younis area without numbering them, and Israel’s May 2015 report names homes, schools, mosques and a hospital compound used for military purposes in the previous war. The IDF put the claim at the center of its answer to the documentary NAZA. Israel’s Foreign Ministry adds that over 1,000 rockets fired by Hamas and other groups landed inside Gaza, its own count. The same 2015 report states that forensic evidence of military use “is rarely available after an attack.”
Key Findings
- The IDF presentation, a party’s own document, maps 3 categories of military site in the Khan Younis Brigade area, rockets, tunnel shafts and command and control sites, and gives no count or date.
- Israel’s May 2015 report, its own account, states that in 2014 Hamas and other groups used “a significant number of residential buildings, schools, mosques, and even medical and U.N. facilities” for military purposes, and gives cases rather than a total.
- Israel’s Foreign Ministry states that over 1,000 rockets fired by Hamas and other armed groups landed inside Gaza by December 2023, its own count, and gives no method.
- The Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a party, states that “The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.”
What does the IDF say about civilian areas in its answer to NAZA?
The IDF’s statement of 11 September 2026, its own account, answers NAZA with a claim about the other side: “Hamas continues to systematically operate from within the civilian environment, embedding its operatives and military infrastructure among the population and exploiting civilian areas for terrorist purposes.”
The statement sets that claim beside its denial. The IDF states that it “categorically rejects these allegations,” and that “the IDF strikes military targets and makes unprecedented efforts to minimize harm to civilians.” The film’s account, as The Guardian reports it, is about the IDF’s conduct: AI-based systems that identified targets “who were then bombed in their homes at night.”
The two accounts concern different parties, and the law treats them separately. A force that places military assets among civilians breaches one set of rules; the force that attacks them remains bound by another. Article 51(8) of Additional Protocol I says so: a violation of the ban on shielding does not release the other side from its obligations toward civilians. Israel is not a party to Additional Protocols I or II; its May 2015 report states that it “abides by their provisions inasmuch as they reflect rules of customary international law.”
The claim is the center of Israel’s official position. Israel’s Foreign Ministry states, in answers updated to 8 December 2023, that “Hamas has spent the last 16 years systematically embedding and dispersing its military operations and assets throughout the entirety of Gaza.” The Foreign Ministry paper of November 2023 states that “it cannot be concluded from the mere fact that seeming ‘civilians’ or ‘civilian objects’ have been targeted, that an attack was unlawful.”
The Institute has not viewed the film; its content enters here through its producer’s reporting.
What does the IDF’s Khan Younis map show?
The IDF presentation, its own document, opens with 4 slides of a single map headed “Gaza/ Khan Younis Brigade,” with a legend of three categories: “Surface-Surface Rockets,” “Tunnel Shafts” and “Command and Control sites.” The markers cover the built-up area of Khan Younis and the ground around it.
The map names places on both sides of the border: Khan Younis and Khuza’a in Gaza, and across the fence four Israeli communities, Kisufim, Ein HaShlosha, Nirim and Nir Oz. Some smaller labels are not legible in the copy provided.
The map is the only picture of the enemy’s military sites that the IDF presentation records, and the closest the records come to a spatial account of the claim. It spreads the three categories across the whole brigade area, with the command and control markers densest at the center of Khan Younis.
It is also the thinnest evidence the records contain. The slides give no count of markers, no date for the survey, no source for the positions, and no indication of which sites were struck, and the presentation itself is undated. The Institute has not counted the markers, because a count of symbols on an undated slide would present an estimate the IDF did not make.
The map’s role in the presentation is to set the problem the rest of the deck answers: military objectives embedded in a populated area, and a process for attacking them. Neither the map nor the statement gives a number for how much of Gaza’s military infrastructure sat inside civilian buildings.
How does Israel’s 2014 record describe homes used for military purposes?
Israel’s May 2015 report, its own account, states that in the 2014 war Hamas and other groups used “a significant number of residential buildings, schools, mosques, and even medical and U.N. facilities for military operational purposes, most often as command and control centres or as arms depots.” It gives cases, not a total.
The Foreign Ministry report states that “Commanders in Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades also made widespread use of residences for military purposes, often situating command and control centres inside their homes.” Among its cases is a strike on 8 July 2014 on a weapons depot and planning site in a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander’s home, which the IDF considered a target “not because” he lived there, “but because the site was used as an operational planning site.” That case is the one target card Israel has published, examined in the Institute’s report on strikes on homes where families live.
A larger building shows the other method. Hamas, the report states, “situated several command and control centres on multiple floors of the ‘Zafer 4’ building,” and the IDF struck it on 23 August 2014 “After providing several effective advance warnings to the building’s occupants and neighbours, and verifying that it was fully vacated.” It adds: “No civilians were harmed in the attack.”
Israel describes the practice as a strategy. Embedding military operations in civilian areas, the report states, “is not ancillary to their main military objectives; nor is it an inevitability of combat within the Gaza Strip. Rather, it is a deliberate and systematic strategy designed to draw IDF forces into combat inside densely populated areas.”
Every case here is from 2014 and rests on Israel’s own intelligence. The report names the commanders whose homes it describes; this report does not. It gives no count of homes used or struck, and none of its cases concerns the current war.
What does Israel say about schools, mosques and other protected sites?
Israel’s 2015 report, its own account, names 6 neighborhoods where it says schools were used in 2014 for “weapons storage, command and control of operations, and rocket launches”: Beit Lahiya, Jabalia, Sheikh Radwan, Shuja’iyeh, Al-Tuffah and Al-Zaitoun. It states that such use “rendered these facilities military objectives under the Law of Armed Conflict.”
The Foreign Ministry report states that the IDF attacked schools rarely: “in a very few cases, military necessity compelled Israel to attack educational facilities that were used for military purposes,” and in none of them was the object a school run by UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees. It gives no count of the “very few cases.”
On mosques, it states that Hamas and other groups “routinely used mosques all over the Gaza Strip for various military purposes.” In a mosque in Khuza’a on 29 July 2014, after a firefight, IDF forces found “a weapons stockpile and two entrances to combat tunnels in the basement prayer room,” and the report prints photographs. A strike on a tunnel inside a mosque in Al-Zaitoun on 9 August 2014 was carried out “before the time for morning prayers,” after warnings to neighbouring homes.
The IDF strike chart records one question on such places, “Proximity to Sensitive Sites?”, as the fifth of its eight steps. The Foreign Ministry report states that sensitive sites include “hospitals, educational facilities, cultural property, religious sites, large food factories, power stations” and U.N. facilities, and that “All levels of command receive notice of the location and nature of sensitive sites.” On the IDF’s procedure, proximity is a question asked before a strike, not a bar to it.
The evidence has the same shape throughout. Each claim about a category of site comes with one or two dated cases and no count, and each case is Israel’s account of its own operation. The cases are specific enough, with dates, places and in one case photographs, to be checkable in principle.
What does Israel say about hospitals?
Israel’s 2015 report describes one hospital case from 2014 in detail, its own account: militants, it states, “repeatedly fired at IDF forces from, and set up military surveillance devices within, the Al-Wafa hospital compound” in July of that year. It adds that the IDF “repeatedly warned” authorities in Gaza and international organisations that the military use must stop.
The Foreign Ministry report states that the IDF struck the compound on 23 July 2014, after those warnings “went unheeded” and after “confirming multiple times that staff members and other civilians were no longer present.” It notes that medical facilities have “special (though not absolute) protection from attack,” and that IDF orders “strictly limited the circumstances in which such objects could be attacked.”
For the current war, Israel’s Foreign Ministry makes the claim in general terms, its own position. The Foreign Ministry paper of November 2023 states that “Hamas systematically conceals some of its most valuable and extensive military centers and assets in and underneath hospitals, including the Al-Shifa hospital, which is the largest hospital in Gaza.” Its December 2023 answers state that Hamas built tunnels “with access points located in homes, mosques, schools and even hospitals.”
The treaty rule on hospitals turns on warning. Article 19 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a party, states that a civilian hospital’s protection “shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy,” and may cease “only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit and after such warning has remained unheeded.”
The 2014 case, as Israel tells it, follows that sequence: military use, warnings, a strike after the warnings failed. The current-war statements name a hospital and a pattern, and the records examined here contain no comparable case file for any hospital in this war.
What does Israel say Hamas did to keep civilians in place?
Israel’s May 2015 report, its own account, quotes a Hamas manual recovered in Shuja’iyeh in 2014, “A Chapter in Urban Combat,” which states that “The soldiers and commanders [of the enemy] must limit their use of weapons and tactics that lead to the harm and unnecessary loss of people and [destruction of] civilian facilities.” Israel cites it as evidence that the constraint was understood and used.
The Foreign Ministry report states that in 2014 Hamas and other groups “significantly increased the risk of harm to Gaza’s civilians” by “conducting military operations in civilian areas” and by encouraging, “and even coercing,” civilians “to ignore IDF warnings and remain in the zone of hostilities.” It adds that militants donned “civilian garb” and disguised themselves “as medical personnel.”
Israel makes the same claim for the current war. Israel’s Foreign Ministry states that Hamas “consistently and forcibly acts to frustrate these efforts, including by setting up roadblocks, threatening civilians not to leave, and issuing calls to ignore IDF recommendations to evacuate.” Its December 2023 answers describe “Hamas’s repeated efforts to endanger civilian lives by keeping them in areas of increased danger.”
The Institute’s report on neighborhoods that stayed populated sets out the IDF’s warnings and its statement that warned areas are never assumed empty. Israel’s account of why people stayed is the other half of that picture: on its telling, some remained because they were kept there.
The records give no count of people prevented from leaving, of roadblocks, or of calls to stay. The manual is a 2014 document quoted in Israel’s translation, and the current-war statements are the Ministry’s characterization of the other party. Under Article 51(8) of Additional Protocol I, even where that account holds, the attacking force’s obligations toward the civilians who remained do not change.
How many Hamas rockets does Israel say fell inside Gaza?
Israel’s Foreign Ministry states that “Over 1,000 missiles fired by Hamas and other armed groups have landed in Gaza,” in answers updated to 8 December 2023, its own count. It gives no method and no source.
The Ministry continues: “These rockets, indiscriminately fired at Israel, have instead exploded within the Gaza Strip. Evidence shows that these rockets exploded in schools and near hospitals, causing untold civilian harm.” It adds that “the likelihood that many hundreds of these rockets have landed in dense urban areas suggest that they are a significant cause of civilian casualties.”
The claim has a precedent in Israel’s account of 2014. The Foreign Ministry report of 2015 states that “Rockets and mortars fired by these organisations at Israel’s civilian population fell short inside the Gaza Strip,” and that “secondary explosions triggered by IDF attacks on weapons depots located inside civilian homes caused damage to the surrounding areas.” It gives no count of rockets that fell short.
The IDF presentation’s map places rocket launch sites inside and around Khan Younis, and a rocket that falls short from such a site lands in or near the same populated area. That is the mechanism the Ministry’s claim rests on, and its own wording marks the limit: “the likelihood” that “many hundreds” landed in dense areas “suggest” a significant cause.
The figure is a floor, a party’s own, and cumulative to December 2023. It gives no count of people killed or injured by rockets that fell short, and no record examined here separates such deaths from others.
What does the law say when a party fights from civilian areas?
The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, to which Israel is a party, states in Article 28 that “The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.” The rule binds the party that places its forces among civilians.
Additional Protocol I adds a duty on the defending side. Article 58 requires parties, “to the maximum extent feasible,” to “avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas,” and Article 51(7) forbids using civilians “to shield military objectives from attacks.” The Rome Statute lists as a war crime “Utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations.” Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute.
The same instruments bind the attacking side. Article 51(8) states that a violation of the shielding ban does not release the other party from its obligations toward civilians, “including the obligation to take the precautionary measures provided for in Article 57.” A military objective inside a home remains a lawful target; the civilians around it remain protected, and the expected harm to them is weighed.
Israel’s own statements accept that structure. The Foreign Ministry report of 2015 states that collateral damage is lawful “so long as it is not expected to be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage from an attack on a military objective.” The Military Advocate General’s Corps states that civilian harm “in most cases do not by themselves indicate a reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct.”
On the law as Israel states it, the claim that Hamas fights from civilian sites establishes that such sites may be targets. It does not settle whether any strike on one was proportionate, which is decided strike by strike and is the question the film raises.
What can Israel’s records not show about civilian sites?
Israel’s 2015 report states, its own account, that “forensic evidence that a particular site was used for military purposes is rarely available after an attack,” because such evidence “is usually destroyed in the attack or, if time allows, removed.” Its cases therefore rest on intelligence and on what forces found on the ground.
That limit runs through every record here. The IDF presentation’s map gives positions with no count, date or source. The 2015 report gives named cases and no totals. The Foreign Ministry’s current-war statements give a pattern, a hospital and a floor of 1,000 rockets. None gives the number of civilian buildings used for military purposes, the share of targets that were such buildings, or the civilian harm in strikes on them.
The strongest evidence in the records is specific and old: dated 2014 cases with places, precautions and in one instance photographs. The records for the current war are statements of a pattern and an undated map. The 2014 cases show how Israel says it handled such sites; they cannot show how often the same pattern held after October 2023.
The film’s claims and Israel’s answer meet here without touching. NAZA, as The Guardian reports it, concerns how targets were chosen and what civilian harm was accepted; Israel’s answer concerns where the enemy placed its assets. Both can be true at once, and neither record measures the other.
A count would join them: how many strikes in the current war hit buildings the IDF classed as military objectives by use, and with what expected and actual harm. No record examined here supplies it.
Methodology and limitations
This report sets the IDF’s answer to the documentary NAZA against Israel’s own records of where Hamas placed military assets: the first four slides and the strike chart of an IDF presentation provided to the Institute, the IDF’s statement of 11 September 2026, the Foreign Ministry’s May 2015 report on the 2014 war, its answers updated to 8 December 2023 and its November 2023 legal paper, and the Military Advocate General’s Corps page on alleged misconduct. The film’s claims come from The Guardian, which produced it; the film was not viewed.
Every factual claim about Hamas here is Israel’s own account, published by a party to the conflict, and is not independently verified. The Hamas manual is quoted in Israel’s translation. The presentation and its map are undated, and the Institute did not count the map’s markers.
Conclusion
The IDF’s answer to NAZA points at the other side, and Israel’s own records back it with a map and a set of cases. Does Hamas fight from civilian sites, on those records? Israel documents homes used as command posts, schools used for weapons and rocket fire, a mosque with tunnels beneath its prayer room and a hospital compound used to fire on troops, and it counts over 1,000 rockets that fell back into Gaza. The documentation is specific for 2014 and general for the war since.
What the records do not do is count. They show that the practice occurred and how Israel says it responded, not how much of Gaza’s military infrastructure sat in civilian buildings, or what share of the strikes the film describes were on such sites.
The law Israel accepts makes the claim matter and limits what it proves: a site used for military purposes may be struck, and the people around it still weigh in the balance. When one party’s case rests on where the enemy hid and the other’s on what the striking force accepted, what record would show both at once?
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the IDF’s claim about Hamas and civilian areas?
The IDF states that “Hamas continues to systematically operate from within the civilian environment, embedding its operatives and military infrastructure among the population.”
Does using a civilian building for military purposes make it a lawful target?
Israel’s May 2015 report states that military use of schools “rendered these facilities military objectives under the Law of Armed Conflict.” Any attack on such a site remains subject to proportionality and precautions.
What happened at the Al-Wafa hospital in 2014, on Israel’s account?
Israel’s 2015 report states that militants fired on IDF forces from the compound in July 2014. It says the IDF warned repeatedly and struck on 23 July after confirming that staff and civilians had left.
How many Hamas rockets does Israel say landed in Gaza?
Israel’s Foreign Ministry states that over 1,000 rockets fired by Hamas and other armed groups landed in Gaza, in answers updated to 8 December 2023. It gives no method or count of casualties from them.
Is human shielding a war crime?
The Rome Statute lists using the presence of civilians to make places or forces immune from attack as a war crime, and the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits it. Israel is a party to the Fourth Geneva Convention and not to the Rome Statute.
Does the IDF’s strike process check for hospitals and schools?
The IDF’s strike chart asks “Proximity to Sensitive Sites?” before a strike. Israel’s 2015 report states that all levels of command receive notice of sensitive sites, including hospitals, schools and religious sites.
Why can’t Israel’s claims about specific sites be checked after a strike?
Israel’s 2015 report states that forensic evidence of military use “is rarely available after an attack” because it is destroyed or removed.
Sources
- Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention), 12 August 1949. Articles 19 and 28. https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949. Treaty text.
- Israel Defense Forces, 2026. The IDF Spokesperson’s Response Following the Publication of the Movie “NAZA.” 11 September 2026. https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/israel-hamas-war-gaza/articles-israel-hamas-war-gaza/distributions-swords-of-iron-war-gaza/the-idf-spokesperson-s-response-following-the-publication-of-the-movie-naza/. Official statement, a party’s own.
- Israel Defense Forces, undated. Addressing Challenges Through LOAC | IHL, targeting process presentation, 18 slides. Provided to the Hanover Institute. /hanover/media/naza/idf-targeting-process-presentation.pdf. Official record, a party’s own presentation.
- Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2015. The 2014 Gaza Conflict: Factual and Legal Aspects, Chapter VI: IDF Conduct of Operations During the 2014 Gaza Conflict. Dated May 2015, released 14 June 2015. https://www.gov.il/en/pages/idf-conduct-of-operations-during-the-2014-gaza-conflict. Official record, a party’s own account.
- Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2023. Hamas-Israel Conflict 2023: Frequently Asked Questions. Updated to 8 December 2023. https://www.gov.il/en/pages/swords-of-iron-faq-6-dec-2023. Official record, a party’s own counts and position.
- Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2023. Hamas-Israel Conflict 2023: Key Legal Aspects. Updated to 2 November 2023. https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/generalpage/swords-of-iron-faq-6-dec-2023/en/English_Documents_Hamas-Israel%20Conflict%202023%20-%20Some%20Factual%20and%20Legal%20Aspects%20-%20Israel%20Ministry%20of%20Foreign%20Affairs%20(2%20NOV%202023).pdf. Official record, a party’s own position.
- Military Advocate General’s Corps, Israel Defense Forces, 2024. Addressing Alleged Misconduct in the Context of the War in Gaza. Published 24 February 2024, updated 3 August 2024. https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/military-advocate-generals-corps/addressing-alleged-misconduct-in-the-context-of-the-war-in-gaza-published-february-24-2024/. Official record, a party’s own account.
- Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977. Articles 51 and 58. https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977. Treaty text.
- Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 17 July 1998. Article 8(2)(b)(xxiii). https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf. Treaty text.
- The Guardian, 2026. Secret systems used by Israel in mass killings of Gaza civilians revealed in new film. 10 September 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/10/secret-systems-used-by-israel-in-mass-killings-of-gaza-civilians-revealed-in-new-film. International press, the film’s producer.