Hamas has spent the last two years turning apartment buildings, schoolhouses, and hospitals into weapons depots and military bases. The goal has always been to ensure that any Israeli self-defense campaign will turn into humanitarian crisis (they're actually using that exact phrase on their official webpage). But Israel has gone out of its way to avoid civilian casualties, from warning civilians about impending strikes via cell phones to conducting only highly precise pinpoint strikes that don't even graze surrounding apartment complexes.

So how's a callous gang of genocidal lunatics supposed get their human shields into the media spotlight? Easy: take what civilian casualties there are and make sure they die:

Egypt says the Hamas militant group, which controls Gaza, is preventing hundreds of wounded Palestinians from leaving for treatment in Egypt. Cairo says dozens of empty ambulances are at the Rafah crossing - the only one to Gaza which avoids Israel... Hamas officials say 271 Palestinians have been killed and 600 wounded since Israel began its aerial assault on the Gaza Strip on Saturday, but none of the injured have yet left via Rafah.

Not exactly a surprise - this is the exact same stunt they pulled last June. One more thing from that BBC article though:

Gaza has been crippled by an Israeli blockade of all but the most essential supplies, leaving even basic medicines in desperate shortage. The UN Relief Works Agency - the largest humanitarian organisation working in Gaza - said it has had to stop distributing food and that hospitals were "near to collapse". Spokesman Christopher Gunness told the BBC that the organisation was struggling to maintain its 18 clinics in Gaza.

Yeah, that's bullshit.

References and previously after the jump...