The Israeli army has rejected as “baseless” UN claims that its rules of engagement permitted Jewish soldiers to use civilians – including children – as human shields during the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

A 47-page UN report released last week also claims that Israeli soldiers shot Palestinian children, bulldozed a home with a woman and child still inside, and shelled a building they had ordered civilians into a day earlier.

The report, however, failed to obtain Israel’s side of the story. It also mostly did not mention Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields or reports of terrorists firing at Israeli troops from shelled buildings.

“Presenting Israel Defense Forces soldiers as using Palestinians as human shields is unreasonable,” the IDF said in a statement e-mailed to WorldNetDaily. “The instructions given to IDF soldiers forbid in clear terms such use, and presenting them as norms of engagement by the IDF is not true.”

The IDF routinely risks the lives of its soldiers by sending them into densely populated urban warfare zones to fight house-to-house instead of carpet bombing the area. The U.S., on the other hand, carpet bombed villages in Afghanistan several times rather than send its soldiers house-to-house to flush out militants.

Hamas Confirms Sudan Strike

A source within Hamas has admitted that a weapons convoy in Sudan meant for his organization was struck by a missile in January.

This past week has seen a flurry of media reports claiming that the Israel Air Force carried out one or more attacks on convoys of trucks carrying arms destined for Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The strike would signify a heightened and expanded Israeli response to rampant weapons smuggling into Gaza, sending a message to Hamas’s backers that Israel will strike outside the Gaza Strip.

A top source in Hamas’s military wing told this column there was indeed an attack against a weapons convoy in Sudan. “It is true,” said the source, speaking from Gaza. “One of the convoys was exploded at the beginning of the year, but the smuggling continues in spite of the strike.”

The Hamas source continued: “It is not a secret that Sudan is the heart of the smuggling operation of Hamas. The Israelis and Americans know the traditional weapons track is from Iran to Sudan to the [Egyptian] Sinai into Gaza.”

The source did not know who carried out the strike in Sudan.

Hamas Infiltrates Fatah?

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah organization suspects its U.S.-backed militias and official intelligence service have been infiltrated by Hamas, according to PA sources speaking to this reporter.

The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the possible infiltration was highlighted this past Monday with the robbery of the office of Bethlehem’s attorney general, a leading Fatah member.

Although the robbery received little media attention, the sources said many important documents detailing Hamas’s infrastructure in the West Bank and the Islamist group’s general activity disappeared from the Bethlehem office.

An internal Fatah police investigation found that the break-in was orchestrated by elements in the PA’s general intelligence service to make it look like an outside robbery carried out by a criminal gang, the sources said.

A separate recent Fatah investigation quietly concluded that the PA’s general intelligence service, as well as members of Fatah’s militias, are in a “heavy” state of infiltration by Hamas, the sources added.

The U.S. arms, trains and funds Fatah militias.

The possibility of a Hamas infiltration is significant since Hamas’s penetration of Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip was thought to have enabled the terror group’s 2007 takeover of the entire Gaza Strip during which it forcibly expelled Fatah from power.

Hamas Reportedly Behind
Lebanon Assassination

There are signs pointing to Hamas’s involvement in the assassination last week of a top Palestine Liberation Organization man in Lebanon, PA officials claimed.

The officials, speaking from the West Bank city of Ramallah, said an initial Fatah investigation found some video evidence, witnesses and other signs linking Fatah’s Hamas rivals to Monday’s attack in which Kamal Medhat, the PLO’s number-two man in Lebanon, was killed in a roadside bomb.

The PA officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believe Hamas took the lead in the assassination, working alongside elements of the Iranian-backed Hizbullah terrorist organization. The officials said Medhat recently had received death threats from what they termed “another Palestinian faction.”

One PA source said, “From an analytic point of view, this assassination was meant to send a message to the PLO that Hamas can deal with our people in Lebanon if we continue to arrest them in the West Bank.”

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.com. He appears throughout the week on leading U.S. radio programs and is the author of the book “Schmoozing with Terrorists.”

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Aaron Klein is the Jerusalem bureau chief for Breitbart News. Visit the website daily at www.breitbart.com/jerusalem. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York's 970 AM Radio on Sundays from 7 to 9 p.m. Eastern. His website is KleinOnline.com.