Skip the first part of the CounterPunch article until you get to the new evidence of the war crime against its own Arab citizens.

"According to the Human Rights Association's report, Israel made its Arab citizens vulnerable to Hizbullah's rockets in the following ways:

* Permanent military bases, including army camps, airfields and weapons factories, as well as temporary artillery positions that fired thousands of shells and mortars into southern Lebanon were located inside or next to many Arab communities.

* The Israeli army trained soldiers inside northern Arab communities before and during the war in preparation for a ground invasion, arguing that the topography in these communities wa...

Skip the first part of the CounterPunch article until you get to the new evidence of the war crime against its own Arab citizens.

"According to the Human Rights Association's report, Israel made its Arab citizens vulnerable to Hizbullah's rockets in the following ways:

* Permanent military bases, including army camps, airfields and weapons factories, as well as temporary artillery positions that fired thousands of shells and mortars into southern Lebanon were located inside or next to many Arab communities.

* The Israeli army trained soldiers inside northern Arab communities before and during the war in preparation for a ground invasion, arguing that the topography in these communities was similar to the villages of south Lebanon.

* The government failed to evacuate civilians from the area of fighting, leaving Arab citizens particularly in danger. Almost no protective measures, such as building public shelters or installing air raid sirens, had been taken in Arab communities, whereas they had been in Jewish communities.

Under the protocols to the Geneva Conventions, parties to a conflict must "avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas" and must "endeavour to remove the civilian population from the vicinity of military objectives". The Human Rights Association report clearly shows that Israel cynically broke these rules of war.

Tarek Ibrahim, a lawyer and the author of the Association's report, says the most surprising finding is that Hizbullah's rockets mostly targeted Arab communities where military installations had been located and in the main avoided those where there were no such military positions.

"Hizbullah claimed on several occasions that its rockets were aimed primarily at military targets in Israel. Our research cannot prove that to be the case but it does give a strong indication that Hizbullah's claims may be true."

Although Hizbullah's Katyusha rockets were not precision-guided, the proximity of Israeli military positions to Arab communities "are within the margin of error of the rockets fired by Hizbullah", according to the report. In most cases, such positions were located either inside the community itself or a few hundred metres from it.

In its recommendations, the Human Rights Association calls for the removal of all Israeli military installations from civilian communit...

"Hizbullah claimed on several occasions that its rockets were aimed primarily at military targets in Israel. Our research cannot prove that to be the case but it does give a strong indication that Hizbullah's claims may be true."

Although Hizbullah's Katyusha rockets were not precision-guided, the proximity of Israeli military positions to Arab communities "are within the margin of error of the rockets fired by Hizbullah", according to the report. In most cases, such positions were located either inside the community itself or a few hundred metres from it.

In its recommendations, the Human Rights Association calls for the removal of all Israeli military installations from civilian communities.

(Again noteworthy is the fact that Israel has built several weapons factories inside Arab communities, including in Nazareth. Arab citizens are almost never allowed to work in Israel's vast military industries, so why build them there? Part of the reason is doubtless that they provide another pretext for confiscating Arab communities' lands and "Judaising" them. But is the criticism by Arab legislators of "human shielding" another possible reason?)

The report avoids dealing with the wider issue of whether the Israeli army located in Jewish communities too during the war. Ibrahim explains: "In part the reason was that we are an Arab organisation and that directs the focus of our work. But there is also the difficulty that Israeli Jews are unlikely to cooperate with our research."

Israel has longed boasted of its "citizen army", and in surveys Israeli Jews say they trust the military more than the country's parliament, government and courts.

Nonetheless, the report notes, there is ample evidence that the army based itself in some Jewish communities too. As well as the eyewitness account of the Human Rights Watch researcher, it was widely reported during the war that 12 soldiers were killed when a Hizbullah rocket struck the rural community of Kfar Giladi, close to the northern border.

A member of the kibbutz, Uri Eshkoli, recently told the Israeli media: "We deserve a medal of honour for our assistance during the war. We opened our hotel to soldiers and asked for no...

Israel has longed boasted of its "citizen army", and in surveys Israeli Jews say they trust the military more than the country's parliament, government and courts.

Nonetheless, the report notes, there is ample evidence that the army based itself in some Jewish communities too. As well as the eyewitness account of the Human Rights Watch researcher, it was widely reported during the war that 12 soldiers were killed when a Hizbullah rocket struck the rural community of Kfar Giladi, close to the northern border.

A member of the kibbutz, Uri Eshkoli, recently told the Israeli media: "We deserve a medal of honour for our assistance during the war. We opened our hotel to soldiers and asked for no compensation. Moreover, soldiers stayed in the kibbutz throughout the entire war."

In another report, in the Guardian newspaper, a 19-year-old British Jew, Danny Young, recounted his experiences performing military service during the war. He lived on Kibbutz Sasa, close to the border, which became an army rear base. "We were shooting missiles from the foot of this kibbutz," he told the paper. "We were also receiving Katyushas."