the occupation Foreign Ministry on Sunday issued a lengthy paper arguing that its troops adhered to international law and blaming the Palestinian resistance for most of the civilian casualties in Gaza.

In a pre-emptive strike against a forthcoming United Nations report on the Zionist war on the Gaza Strip last year, the occupation Foreign Ministry on Sunday issued a lengthy paper arguing that its troops adhered to international law and blaming the Palestinian resistance for most of the civilian casualties in Gaza.

The Zionist entity refused to cooperate with the United Nations Human Rights Council’s inquiry into the 50-day conflict, denouncing it as biased. With the council expected to publish its findings as soon as Monday, Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "Anyone who wants to continue with an automatic indictment against Israel, which is baseless, can waste his time reading the UN commission report."

Netanyahu, also dubbed as Bibi, suggested instead that people read the Zionist 280-page report of the operation, or one produced over the weekend by five former generals from other countries. They are among a dozen in-depth reviews by 'pro-Israel advocacy groups'.

"The interesting thing is that the Israeli government has tried a new tactic, to give its own - one-sided perhaps, but its own - report before the U.N. would publish, so that Israel won’t have only to react but will be able to lead the discussion," said Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a media expert at the Israel Democracy Institute.

The Israeli report mostly repeats familiar positions. It said Hamas resistance faction "intentionally and systematically used strategies designed to maximize harm to civilian life and property," such as firing rockets from within or near homes, schools, hospitals and mosques, and encouraging residents not to heed Israel’s evacuation warnings.

"Israel makes efforts, including beyond its legal obligations, to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians," it added.

Though the United Nations and others have said as many as three-quarters of the more than 2,100 Palestinians killed during the conflict were noncombatants, the new report said that the Zionist intelligence has documented militant activity by 936 of the dead, or about 44 percent. The occupation authorities determined that an additional 761, or about 36 percent, were “uninvolved civilians,” leaving 428 men, ages 16 to 50, whose status remained unknown.

The report included aerial photography and maps of what is said to be Hamas activity near sensitive sites like United Nations schools serving as shelters that the Zionist warplanes struck, as well as previously unrevealed internal military documents assessing targets.

The study also claimed that the Zionist entity followed the principle of proportionality for collateral damage when hitting targets. Yet previous studies by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Zionist rights group B’Tselem and others documenting strikes on Palestinian homes that wiped out entire families cited international law to make the opposite point.

And a report published last month by Breaking the Silence, another Zionist group, compiled devastating testimony from scores of soldiers saying permissive rules of engagement and indiscriminate artillery fire contributed to mass civilian casualties.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, the Palestinian Resistance group, said in a telephone interview with New York Times that the new report "has no value and will not work in changing the facts because the Israeli occupation crimes took place in front of the world’s cameras."

Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem, said the Zionist report "will probably not sway international public opinion" but may be intended more "to kind of reassure the Israeli public" that the government is standing up to criticism.

"If you speak to people in Gaza," Michaeli said, "this whole process of fact finding and information gathering isn’t helping them in any way to recover from what they’ve suffered."