See this DU thread Hamas fires rocket at Israel from populated residential area

No-one says Hamas is blameless, but what is the point of Israel attacking unoccupied land with used disposable rocket launchers wherever that land might be?

in the case of the NDTV launcher, the rocket team departed the scene about a day before the rocket was launched.

Most of the time, these rocket teams operate under the "shoot and scoot" principle, by the time the rocket is in the air, they're long gone.

But there's no denying what Hamas does and that's what has been happening , so now there's a new tune about "justifying" well that's a different story.

Both the Indian video and this French one were of rockets being fired in the vicinity of where the international media was staying. In both instances the Israeli Army did not shell the areas concerned.

It does seem quite conclusive that Hamas were exploiting the presence of the media in this instance. In other instances, I'm not sure that the presence of Arab civilians serves as a "shield" since Israel has no particular compunctions about killing Arab civilians. They certainly seem to take greater care around the media though.