[45][46] In the initial air assault, Israel attacked police stations, military targets including weapons caches and suspected rocket firing teams, as well as political and administrative institutions, striking in the densely populated cities of Gaza, Khan Yunis and Rafah.

Following the death of Yassar Arafat in November 2004, his successor to the Palestinian Authority, President Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon signed a ceasefire agreement on 8 February 2005, essentially bringing an end to the Second Intifada.

[75] In a widely cited article,[76][77][78][79] David Rose outlined material suggesting that the United States and Israel then attempted to have the Palestinian National Authority stage a coup to overturn the election results, a manoeuvre Hamas is said to have preempted in Gaza with its takeover from Fatah.

[111] On 2 August there were massive clashes in Gaza City after Hamas had stepped up its campaign to curb Fatah from attacking Israel[112] The truce started uneasily with the UN recording seven IDF violations of the ceasefire between 20 and 26 June.

[112] "As of 15 August, the UN reported that Israel was allowing a few new items into Gaza (including limited supplies of cement, clothes, juices, and agricultural materials) but said that overall humanitarian conditions had not significantly improved since the cease-fire began".

"[162] On 25 December, after Israel had "wrapped up preparations for a broad offensive", Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert delivered a final warning in an interview with the Arabic language satellite channel al-Arabiya.

Typically, Israeli intelligence officers and Shin Bet security servicemen contacted residents of a building in which they suspected storage of military assets and told them that they had 10–15 minutes to flee the attack.

[246][249][250][251] An independent report commissioned jointly by the Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society notes that according to testimonies by local witnesses, there were several cases where IDF ground forces breached the daily ceasefire agreement.

[260] Ron Ben-Yishai, an Israeli military correspondent embedded with invading ground forces, stated that entire blocks of houses were booby-trapped and wired in preparation for urban confrontation with the IDF.

[262] Hamas and Islamic Jihad also manufactured a variety of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), some of which were anti-personnel bombs and others were planted on the sides of roads or underground to be activated against tanks and armored personnel carriers.

[268] According to Human Right Watch, On 24 December 2008, a rocket struck a bedroom of a family living in the Tel al-Hawa area in southern Gaza City, critically wounding one man.

[270] According to Human Rights Watch rockets from Gaza were fired from populated areas, an Islamic Jihad fighter said: "the most important thing is achieving our military goals.... We stay away from the houses if we can, but that's often impossible.

On 27 January 2009, Foreign Minister of Egypt Ahmed Aboul Gheit discouraged Britain, France and Germany from sending warships to patrol the waters off Gaza, which the three European nations felt could help halt seaborne smuggling.

[298] Shortly after becoming President of the United States, Barack Obama directed newly appointed special envoy to the Middle East George J. Mitchell to visit Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia for peace talks.

Mitchell began his meetings in Cairo on 27 January 2009, and Obama said his visit was part of the President's campaign promise to listen to both sides of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and work toward a Middle East peace deal.

After the war, the GHM, PCHR, and Al-Mezan all provided a list of casualties for every single person killed, including their name, age, gender, address, occupation and the place and date of death.

[47] According to Ayman al-Batniji, spokesperson for the Palestinian Police Force in Gaza, almost 251 policemen were killed within the first few hours of the attack which also left more than 700 others injured, including those who could never return to work due to losing their legs and other limbs.

[47] Human Rights Watch stated that police are presumptively civilians but on a specific case-by-case basis can be considered valid targets if formally incorporated into the armed forces of a party to a conflict or directly participate in the hostilities.

[citation needed] The Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs further reported that 286 of the 343 police officers killed during the offensive were members of terror organizations and that another 27 fighters belonged to units undergoing infantry training.

[350] The day before the beginning of the offensive on 27 December the IDF pulled troops back from the border and used its radio channels to broadcast talk of a "lull" to achieve a disinformation coup to lure Hamas fighters out of hiding.

According to Ephraim Kam, deputy head of the Institute of National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, the claim could not be confirmed but it strengthened the Israeli population's will to continue and undermined the confidence of Hamas in Gaza.

"[372] Professor Newton, expert in laws of armed conflict testifying in front of the committee, said that in an urban area, where potential perils are snipers, explosive devices and trip wires, one effective way to mask forces' movement is by white phosphorus.

In discussing the principle of proportionality he said that the legality of using white phosphorus in an urban setting could only be decided on a case-by-case basis taking into account "the precise circumstances of its use, not in general, generically, but based on that target, at that time".

[383] In July 2009, the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence published testimony from 26 soldiers (two junior officers and the rest enlisted personnel) who took part in the Gaza assault, claiming that the IDF used Gazans as human shields, improperly fired incendiary white phosphorus shells over civilian areas and used overwhelming firepower that caused needless deaths and destruction.

A representative stated "the personal details of the soldiers quoted in the collection, and the exact location of the incidents described in the testimonies, would readily be made available to any official and independent investigation of the events, as long as the identity of the testifiers did not become public.

[389] In response to the report, a dozen English-speaking reservists who served in Gaza delivered signed, on-camera counter-testimonies via the SoldiersSpeakOut group, about Hamas' "use of Gazans as human shields and the measures the IDF took to protect Arab civilians".

"[444] The Emergency Relief Coordinator of the United Nations has stated that after the end of the Israeli operation, at best, only 120 truckloads get into Gaza, instead of the normal daily requirement, including commercial traffic, of 500 trucks at minimum.

[453][455] An initial survey conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that 14,000 homes, 68 government buildings, and 31 non-governmental organization offices (NGOs) were either totally or partially damaged, creating about 600,000 tonnes of concrete rubble needing to be removed.

[468][474][475][476] The largest hospital on Israel's southern coast, Ashkelon's Barzilai Medical Center, moved its critical treatment facilities into an underground shelter after a rocket struck beside its helicopter pad on 28 December.

[502] Haaretz reported that Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni "instructed senior ministry officials to open an aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign to gain support for Israel Defense Forces operations in the Gaza Strip".