Hamas explains using civilians as human shields:"We desire death as you desire life"

The following is the full text of the comments by Hamas representative Fathi Hammad months before the war, articulating the Hamas ideology to use civilians as human shields for Hamas fighters:
 

For the Palestinian people death has become an industry, at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the Jihad fighters excel, and the children excel. Accordingly [Palestinians] created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters against the Zionist bombing machine, as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death as you desire life.” 

[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas) Feb. 29, 2008]