The Top Eight Gaza Media Myths.

The Top Eight Gaza Media Myths. HT: Camera.

Myth: Hamas has no choice but to place weapons and fighters in populated areas since the Gaza Strip is so crowded that is all there is.

[Hamas has] no other choice. Gaza is the size of Detroit. And 1.5 million live here where there are no places for them to fire from them but from among the population. (Taghreed El-Khodary, New York Times Gaza reporter, on CNN, Jan. 1, 2009)

Fact: There is actually plenty of open space in Gaza, including the now empty sites where Israeli settlements once stood. The Hamas claim, parroted by the Times reporter, is nonsense.
Beyond this, placing your own civilians around or near a military target to act as "human shields" is prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention:

Art. 28. The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.

Article 58 of Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 (which the Palestinian Authority has accepted) goes even further in this regard, requiring that Hamas remove Palestinian civilians from the vicinity of its military facilities, which would include any place where weapons, mortars, bombs and the like are produced, stored, or fired from, and any place where its fighters train, congregate or hide. Here is the text, which calls on the parties to the conflict to:

(a) ... endeavour to remove the civilian population, individual civilians and civilian objects under their control from the vicinity of military objectives;
(b) Avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas;
(c) Take the other necessary precautions to protect the civilian population, individual civilians and civilian objects under their control against the dangers resulting from military operations.

Even UNRWA has weighed in on this, denouncing on July 17 the "group or groups" that had hidden missiles in a UN-run school in Gaza.
Hamas, as the defacto government in Gaza, is responsible for the missiles and other weapons hidden in civilian buildings and areas, and has clearly violated all three of the above provisions.

Read the full compilation here.