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Army police winds down Gaza human shields investigation  By Haaretz Service  Inquiry finds no basis for claims that IDF troops hid behind noncombatants during Operation Cast Lead.  Military police have ended two investigations into the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields during Operation Cast Lead after concluding there was no basis for the claims, Army Radio reported on Wednesday.  The army had been probing allegations in a controversial United Nations report by retired South African Judge Richard Goldstone that IDF troops intentionally hid behind noncombatants during Israel's three-week offensive in Gaza last year.  According to testimony received by Goldstone from the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, soldiers from the army's Golani brigade forced civilians at gunpoint into shielding them from enemy fire.  The military advocate general, Major General Avichai Mandelblit, ordered the files to be closed after investigators interviewed Gaza residents involved in the fighting in late 2008 and early 2009, in which some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.  "There is no dispute that during the military conflagration the use of human shields was completely forbidden, but this is not what occurred here," Mandelblit wrote in his case report. Â
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