Hamas' use of human shields, storage of weapons in schools, and firing of rockets from civilian areas is well-documented despite the threats to journalists who refuse to toe the Hamas line in Gaza. The UN has condemned the use of its schools as weapons storage facilities, and after the war Hamas even admitted to using human shields. Hamas has a deliberate strategy of trying to maximize casualties on their own side - and inflating the number of civilian casualties, in order to garner international sympathy. An organization that favors the use of suicide bombers is quite happy to sacrifice its own people just to score a propaganda victory.
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/unrwa-condemns-placement-rockets-second-time-one-its-schools
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/hamas-quietly-admits-it-fired-rockets-from-civilian-areas/380149/
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/trapped-in-gaza-how-hamas-punishes-reporters-for-the-truth/news-story/410ed7246752eb3fbe251557c43647d4
Israel in fact went to extraordinary lengths to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza, lengths that a delegation of military leaders from various western countries said no other army has ever gone to to prevent harm to the civilian population on the other side of a military conflict. A number of experts on international law said that Israel set a "dangerous precedent" which other nations fighting terror groups like Isis and al Qaeda can't be expected to live up to.
Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg, a distinguished expert on military law at European University Viadrina in Frankfurt, said the IDF takes “many more precautions than are required…[it] is setting an unreasonable precedent for other democratic countries of the world who may also be fighting in asymmetric wars against brutal non-state actors who abuse these laws.”
Michael Schmitt, director of the Stockton Center for the Study for International Law at the US Naval War College, said: "The IDF’s warnings certainly go beyond what the law requires, but they also sometimes go beyond what would be operational good sense elsewhere,” he warned. “People are going to start thinking that the United States and other Western democracies should follow the same examples in different types of conflict. That’s a real risk,”
http://blog.unwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/HLIMG-report-cover-letter-to-Judge-Mary-McGowan-Davis-UNHRC-31-May-2015.pdf
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israels-military-accused-of-being-too-careful-to-avoid-civilian-casualties-in-gaza-war/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/attorneys-at-war/article/964911
