re: Israel appropriates more West Bank land for probable settlements

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According to the U.N., Hamas did use buildings that the U.N. had abandoned, but not the buildings that the U.N. employed as shelters during the war.

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What about apartment buildings? Were they ever used as fighting positions or storage sites with noncombatants present? If so, then those noncombatants should be classified as human shields. The places where Hamas fighters slept at night were legitimate targets. If they slept among noncombatants, then those noncombatants were human shields.

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This is the central question. Gaza isn't Lebanon where Hezbollah has plenty of open space miles away from civilian areas to launch attacks, Gaza is the most densely populated real estate on the planet. What distance is Hamas obligated to operate away from civilian buildings? I don't know the answer, and I doubt that the Geneva Convention spells it out that clearly. Let's also look at the flipside of this question. Should Israel use non-precision weapons like artillery shells in such a densely populated area?

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Hamas had just as much duty to safeguard noncombatants as Israel. What measures did Hamas take to protect noncombatants? I don't recall reading accounts of Hamas evacuating neighborhoods from which it intended to fight.

The practical alternative to artillery is airstrikes. The destruction from airstrikes is much larger than from artillery, and the monetary cost to attack a given target is much greater. So there are those tradeoffs to consider.

If Israel is expected to refrain from using indirect weapons against densely populated areas, then what is Hamas' justification for aiming its artillery weapons at densely populated areas? The fact that Hamas' indirect fire is less effective does not alter the justification.