TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s military yesterday concluded that the strike on a residential building in Qana, Lebanon, was the result of an intelligence failure: that the Jewish state’s air force did not know that civilians were in the building at the time.

The Israel Defense Forces — in the midst of extensive operations elsewhere in Lebanon and under assault by hundreds of Hezbollah missiles each day — has been tight-lipped about the Qana event, which led to images of dead children and a collapsed building broadcast worldwide.

For example, the military does not say whether there were any Hezbollah fighters in the building when two missiles hit it. Nor does it say whether Hezbollah was firing rockets from the building or near the building on the day of the air strike.

“The IDF operated according to information that the building was not inhabited by civilians and was being used as a hiding place for terrorists,” the statement yesterday said. “Had the information indicated that civilians were present in the building the attack would not have been carried out. Prior to the attack on the aforementioned building several other buildings, which were part of the infrastructure for terror activity in the area, were targeted.”

The aftermath of Qana is important to the Jewish state for several reasons. In this asymmetric war, Israel is fighting an enemy that does not wear uniforms and has stored its weapons and fired its rockets from civilian outposts. The furor over the Qana incident from last Sunday nearly forced Israel to accept an immediate cease-fire. Indeed, Secretary of State Rice left her second meeting in Jerusalem Sunday saying such a deal was near. Since then, Prime Minister Olmert has rejected such a prospect, launched an expanded ground offensive into Lebanon and said the Israeli efforts to destroy Hezbollah would not stop until an international buffer force was ready to take Israel’s place.

In the aftermath of Qana, some of Israel’s supporters — encouraged on background at times by Israeli officials — explored the theory that perhaps the entire incident was a hoax. Such an idea is not without precedence. In 2002, during Operation Defensive Shield, the Palestinian Authority told reporters that Israel’s offensive into Jenin was a massacre with thousands of civilian casualties. It turned out that 52 Palestinians, most of whom were gunmen, died in the attack along with 23 Israeli soldiers. Since the initial casualty estimates of Qana of nearly 60 dead, those numbers have been revised to 28.

The statement issued yesterday by Israel’s military does not address the initial question posed by some military officers here as to why there was nearly a seven hour gap between when the missiles struck the residential building and it was first reported to have collapsed.

Earlier this week a former senior Israeli military officer said that the IDF was “certain that the building hit on Sunday was the residence of two Hezbollah operatives.” The statement from the IDF inquiry yesterday to the press makes no mention of whether the intelligence that the building was used for Hezbollah activities was correct.

The report says that the building was targeted in accordance with IDF guidelines “regarding the use of fire against suspicious structures inside villages whose residents have been warned to evacuate, and which were adjacent to areas from where rockets are fired towards Israel.” It goes on to say, “The guidelines were drafted based on surveillance and study of the behavior of the terrorists, who use civilian structures inside villages to store weaponry and hide in after launching rockets attacks.” Israel boasts of a network of human sources in southern Lebanon and a variety of electronic means to survey Hezbollah activities.