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The Palestinian death toll has risen to 821 people, and more than 3,300 have been injured since Israel began its offensive in the Gaza Strip two weeks ago.

A United Nations agency says nearly fifty percent of those killed in Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip are women and children.

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"But this is reality. You do your utmost to try and explain the difference between people aiming at women, children and babies in order to kill them because they are Israelis, and on the other hand – a democratic state trying to defend its citizens."

Dan Gillerman, retiring Israeli ambassador to the United Nations

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"Many people in Israel call us traitors and war criminals because we talk about the war while it is still going on," said Teddy Katz of the Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom.

"But the truth is that this government ordered a criminal war."

Gush Shalom is one member of a coalition that held a news conference on Wednesday, January 7, 2009, to brief the media on peace camp positions.

Some speakers at the news conference focused on what they held to be Israel's real motives for the war - election success and, according to Katz, sanitising corrupt political reputations is also a factor.

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UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said senior Israeli military officials have confessed that there was no gunfire emanating from the school when it came under fire from one of its tanks.

Tel Aviv has attempted to justify its Jan 6 attack on the United Nations school as a response to "militant gunfire" and has released footage of the incident to substantiate its claims.

Gunness, however, asserted that the footage released by Israel dated back to 2007 and was not related to the current incident.