JERUSALEM -- Israel on Sunday criticized a forthcoming United Nations report into last year's war in the Gaza Strip, saying the report is biased, and issued its own report that blames Gaza's Hamas militant rulers for the heavy civilian casualties.
The diplomatic offensive set the stage for a showdown with U.N. officials over allegations that Israel committed war crimes during the 50-day war.
Israel has long had a contentious relationship with the United Nations, saying the world body is biased. A similar report conducted by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council after a 2008-09 war in Gaza was critical of both Israel and Hamas.
But this time around, the stakes are higher. The Palestinians have joined the International Criminal Court and are pursuing war-crimes charges against Israel. The council's new report, expected as soon as this week, could play a key role in the case against Israel.
"Having on the record our view of this war is extremely important, and we have nothing to hide," Dore Gold, the new director of Israel's Foreign Ministry, said at a special briefing held to unveil Israel's 242-page investigation into the war.
Gold was accompanied by the country's deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, and governmental and military legal experts who worked on the report.
Israel launched its offensive in Gaza last July 8 in response to heavy rocket fire from Hamas and other militant groups in the territory. More than 2,200 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, were killed during the fighting, according to U.N. and Palestinian officials, while 73 people died on the Israeli side.
Palestinians have said that the Israeli army violated the rules of war, which include giving adequate warning to civilians, using proportionate force and distinguishing between civilians and combatants. They have pointed to the high civilian casualties as evidence.
The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday produced a different count of the Palestinian dead: 936 (44 percent) they labeled militants; 761 (36 percent) civilians; and 428 (20 percent) as "yet to be categorized," all males ages 16 to 50.
Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official, called the latest Israeli reports "sickening and outrageous" and said they strengthened the need for the Palestinians to seek international justice.
Israel's core claim in Sunday's report is that Hamas is responsible for the civilian casualties because it used Gaza's residents as "human shields" by firing rockets from residential areas and operating in schools, hospitals and mosques. It also notes that Hamas' rockets and mortar shells were aimed at Israeli population centers.
The report includes what Israel says are seized Hamas documents encouraging its fighters to move in civilian areas.
"We were a bit struck and surprised with the amount of documentation that we managed to recover during the operation actually indicating that this is a strategy of Hamas," said Eran Shamir-Borer, a lawyer in the Israeli military's international law department.
Other Hamas texts in the report advise the populace to declare to the media that all dead Palestinians were "innocent civilians." Internet postings from Hamas also show the group urged civilians not to flee their homes because the leaflets being dropped by Israeli forces urging them to do so amounted to "psychological warfare."
Israel has argued that it took unprecedented measures to avoid civilian casualties, ordering residents to evacuate through leaflets, phone calls, radio broadcasts and warning strikes with unarmed shells ahead of live airstrikes.
Shamir-Borer showed Sunday what he said was a declassified "target card" that laid out the calculations Israel took before striking a suspected arms cache hidden in the home of an Islamic Jihad leader in southern Gaza.
The "operational directives" listed on the card call for destroying the arms while avoiding civilian casualties. It calls for a single airstrike on the home, at night and only after warning people to leave, and "real-time surveillance" to be on the lookout for civilians.
Shamir-Borer said the home was hit, and there was a "secondary blast," indicating weapons were stored there. The report said the army was unaware of any casualties from the strike. Shamir-Borer said the army went through a similar process in all 5,000 preplanned airstrikes carried out during the fighting.
The 4,500 mortar shells and rockets fired at Israel by Hamas and other militant factions in Gaza had a range that could reach 70 percent of the Israeli public and caused widespread terror, with 10,000 Israelis along the Gaza border fleeing their homes, according to the report.
The discovery of 32 "attack tunnels" dug by Hamas (14 crossed the border into Israel, 18 were headed that way) lengthened the war, the report stated, because the Israeli military had to enter Gaza to destroy them.
Officials with Hamas, a militant group sworn to Israel's destruction, rejected the Israeli report. Izzat Risheq, a senior Hamas official, called it a "lie promoted by the occupation to cover up its crimes." He said "the hand of justice will reach the perpetrators."
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri also dismissed the Israeli findings. "The report won't help the occupation at all in hiding the Israeli war crimes committed before journalists' cameras," he said by phone.
The new Israeli report is part of a broader campaign aimed at blunting the coming report by the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
Over the weekend, Israel released a report compiled by a group of retired Western military officers who found that Israel met or "significantly exceeded" the international laws of war. The report was sponsored by the "Friends of Israel Initiative," a pro-Israel group of retired politicians and diplomats from around the world.
"Those who want to know the truth should read this report and read the report of the top generals," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet. "Whoever wants a baseless automatic accusation against Israel can waste their time reading the U.N. report."
Israel has declined to cooperate with the U.N. fact-finding mission, citing what it calls prejudicial resolutions by the U.N. council and its experience with a previous U.N. investigation into Israel's military during the 2008-09 Gaza war. That report was chaired by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who in 2011 withdrew a contentious charge contained in his report -- that it was Israel's policy to intentionally target civilians.
Israel has attacked the council's latest investigation since it was ordered last July. The investigation's mandate focuses on Israel's activities in Gaza but makes no mention of Hamas attacks on Israel.
Israeli claims of bias forced the head of the investigation, Canadian law professor William Schabas, to resign early this year after it was discovered he had provided legal advice to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The U.N. report could be an important document for the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, who is now conducting a preliminary examination to decide whether war crimes were committed in Gaza and whether the court has jurisdiction.
The Palestinians also claim that the Israeli military is incapable of investigating itself. An Israeli inquiry that recently cleared the military of criminal conduct in a Gaza beach bombing last summer that killed four Palestinian children was criticized by foreign journalists who witnessed it.
Meanwhile, a 22-year-old Palestinian man was killed Sunday after being hit by an Israeli army jeep amid clashes in the West Bank, authorities said.
Palestinian officials said the clash involved local residents hurling stones at the Israeli troops in the village of Kafr Malik, just outside of Ramallah. The Israeli military said the Palestinian man threw a firebomb at the Israeli jeep, causing it to swerve and hit him. The military said soldiers later tried to provide medical assistance to the man, but the Palestinian had already died from his wounds.
Majid Maadi, the mayor of Kafr Malik, identified the dead Palestinian as Abdallah Ghanayem, 22. Maadi said Israeli soldiers shot Ghanayem before he was hit by the jeep. The Israeli military said it was investigating the death.
Information for this article was contributed by Josef Federman and staff members of The Associated Press; by Calev Ben-David of Bloomberg News; and by William Booth of The Washington Post.
A Section on 06/15/2015