Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

It is evening prayers. In a small hall in Jerusalem, the service is being conducted in Hebrew. Some of the words - indeed some of the prayers - chime exactly with those of a synagogue prayer-book. But this is a Catholic Mass.

There are, it is estimated, more than one billion Catholics around the world. Within the Middle East, the great majority celebrate Mass in Arabic. A tiny sliver - about 400 - celebrate Mass in Hebrew.

Leading the service this evening is Father David Neuhaus. Hebrew, he says, has the distinction of being the first language, other than Greek or Latin, in which the Vatican allowed Mass to be said.

That was in 1956, almost a decade before the decision was taken to allow Mass to be celebrated in any language. The argument, from the petitioners to the Vatican, was that Hebrew was one of the three languages used to inscribe Jesus's cross.

A few days before conducting the evening Mass, Father Neuhaus relates his own, remarkable story in measured and thoughtful tones.

We are sitting in the garden of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, in the centre of Jerusalem - the end to a convoluted journey.

David Neuhaus's parents were German Jews who fled the Nazis and settled in South Africa. As that country descended deeper into the grim mire of apartheid, the teenaged David was sent to Israel, to continue his schooling. There he met a "powerful, mystical" Russian Orthodox nun, and he discovered Jesus.

"I had to then deal with what it meant for a Jew to join a Church which is perceived by the Jewish people as one of the enemies in the history of the Jewish people."

A compromise was struck within David's family. Everyone would draw breath, and wait. David's will did not waver. At the age of 26, he was baptised.

But he insists that through that period, and since, he has integrated what he calls "my two identities".

"I feel very strongly historically, socially, ethnically - in all senses other than religiously - a Jew. And then, integrating with that, who I am as a person in relationship with God. And it's not easy. There are no simple solutions."

Some of the community to whom Father Neuhaus ministers, as one of the five vicars of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, are Catholics who are living for a short time in Israel, and who want to attend a Mass in the local language; some are expatriates who have married Israelis; and some, as with him, have converted from Judaism.

Did he, I asked him, still go to synagogue? A pause. "I do go, discreetly," Father Neuhaus replied. And then a laugh: "Now I'm saying it [in] public."

He often goes to the Friday night services in a reform synagogue which welcomes non-Jews.

"I'm not exactly a non-Jew," he says. "In a certain sense, I'm worse than a non-Jew. And yet I've been welcomed for who I am, and with a sensitivity to this tension."

Not often will you hear a Catholic priest say that part of his identity is fulfilled through the synagogue service, or through participation, with friends and family, in Jewish feasts.

But Father Neuhuas is not unique. Grzegorz Pawlowski, a 78-year old Holocaust survivor from Poland, lives in a small and simply-furnished apartment in Jaffa.

In a level voice, but with his eyes still wide with the memory, Grzegorz related the long story that wound on from the moment, at the age of 11, he was separated from his mother and sisters - whom the Nazis then shot and dumped in a mass grave.

Grzegorz survived for three years by wandering the streets and the countryside, and hiding.

He ended up, after the war, in an orphanage run by the Red Cross.

"I'm afraid to speak that I was Jew," he told me, swapping for the moment from Polish-accented Hebrew to halting English.

"I'm afraid. Because Jew - you can kill him, yes?" And so Grzegor allowed himself to be baptised, before the orphans were to receive their first communion.

It was the start of a journey to Catholicism, which ended with him being ordained as a priest in 1958. But he kept his secret identity for another eight years.

"I felt uncomfortable that I was denying, to my mother and to my father, the fact that I'm Jewish. And so in 1966, I wrote an article in a Catholic Weekly, and there I told my whole story… how I got through the Holocaust, and how I became a priest."

Through that article, Father Pawlowski made contact with the one surviving member of his family - his brother, whom he thought was still living in Russia, where he had first escaped to.

Instead, his brother had made it to Haifa, in Israel. Grzegorz's conversion was a source of pain to his brother. "He never accepted it, never accepted it."

A long sigh followed. "He was a very religious Jew. We had very good relations. But he prayed that I come back to Judaism."

Much as Father Neuhaus explained, Father Pawlowski says that his identity, too, cannot be folded into neat boxes.

"I am a Catholic priest, and I also see myself as Jewish. I am connected to the Jewish nation. On Yom Kippur, I fast. At Passover, I eat matzah."

Sometimes, in synagogue, he says, he has to remember not to cross himself, and kneel; in church he has to make sure he is not wearing his kippa (skull-cap). Father Pawlowski delivers this last reminder to himself in a flat voice, before breaking into a loud, wheezy laugh.

And he has one final commitment to his Jewish roots.

"Close to where my mother and sisters were killed [in Poland], there's a Jewish cemetery, where there is a memorial to my mother and all those who were shot. And I will be buried there, next to my mother, in the Jewish cemetery."

FROM A FATHER TO A DOCTOR

After spending the late morning with Father Pawlowski, I stumbled across Dr Shakshuka, on the fringes of the flea market, in Jaffa.

I ordered the cheap, but laughably misnamed "business lunch".

Within moments of my choice, the waiter descended on my table with eight dishes.

There were four types of meat, the sort that appears to have been cooked for a day at a low, slow heat, then given a massage, then sent on holiday, and only when it has become at one with its surrounding ingredients and is so relaxed that it falls off the bone at the mere approach of your fork, is it then ready to be served.

All the dishes (bar the bed of couscous) went some way to explain why fat is such a good convection agent for flavour.

The good doctor's real name is Bino Gabso. His place has been serving shakshuka (a breakfast dish of eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce) and utterly un-businesslike lunches for 17 years. Before him, his father also had an eatery in Jaffa. The family came to Israel in 1949, from Libya.

I was barely able to talk after lunch, even after a large, strong Arabic coffee, but I managed to croak the tired journalist's question: "Is there a secret?"

"No," Bino replied with fetching directness. "It is Libyan food. There is no secret. In Tripoli, people only have food. They have nothing else in their lives. They don't have music, anything. When they're at work, all they think about is food, and how they're going to make it when they finish work."

Many may take issue with Bino's reduction of Libyan life culture to a mess of lamb and beans. But one thing is certain. If you have business to conclude, do it before you order Dr Shakshuka's business lunch, not after.

A large stockpile of unexploded weapons has disappeared in Gaza, before United Nations experts were able to dispose of it safely, the BBC has learned.

The explosives, including aircraft bombs and white phosphorus shells, were fired by the Israeli military during its recent offensive in the Gaza Strip.

UN officials said they were urgently trying to establish where the arms had gone and have called for their return.

Israel has accused Hamas of taking the stockpile, which was under Hamas guard.

'Extremely dangerous'

Richard Miron, the senior UN spokesman in Jerusalem, said: "We are anxious to get the return of this ordnance. It's clearly extremely dangerous and needs to be disposed of in a safe manner.

"This is our primary concern."

A UN Mines Action Team has been in Gaza since the end of the war, last month, its job to locate unexploded Israeli ordnance and to organise its safe disposal.

Two weeks ago, on 2 February, the UN team was given access to a storage site in Gaza City where more than 7,000kg of explosives was being housed.

It included three 2,000-pound bombs and eight 500-pound bombs, which had all been dropped from aircraft but failed to explode.

There was also a large number of 155mm shells for delivering the incendiary chemical white phosphorus.

Safe areas

Many of the explosives had been collected by the Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip.

The UN staff had been waiting for the Israeli army to allow them to bring specialist equipment into Gaza so they would be able to destroy the explosives safely.

In particular, the team needed explosives or flares to set off a controlled explosion and they needed tools to allow them to extract fuses from some of the bombs.

The UN staff were also waiting for permission from the Israeli military to use two safe areas to dispose of the munitions.

At a meeting last Thursday with the Israeli army, two areas were identified: one in the north, in a no-go area close to the border with Israel and the other near Khan Younis in the south, in a former Hamas training area.

On Sunday, when UN officials returned to the warehouse, which was under a Hamas police guard, they say they found most of the explosives had gone missing.

Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner said the stockpile had been "commandeered by Hamas".

'AND HERE I AM 60 YEARS LATER'

To get to Ali Abu Zour's living quarters, you have to fold yourself into an improbable shape, and stoop-crawl-walk through the square hole in the back of his shop.

Once we had reached the bare room next to the kitchen, we decided it would be better to go back to the shop: just as comfortable, and he might not lose any passing business, as we talked.

Outside was the glare and the noise of the main market drag of Balata refugee camp, close to Nablus. Inside Mr Abu Zour's shop, the light was dull and greyish, the shelves filled with dusty packets of soap powder and floor cleaner.

On a plastic stool by his side, sat Mr Abu Zour's youngest son, 14-year-old Mohammed.

He grinned toothily as his father produced his ID card from 60 years ago.

In the photo, Ali may have been wearing a jacket and tie where Mohammed was now wearing a black t-shirt.

But other than that, the two boys were indistinguishable - replete with quiff, searching eyes, and large front teeth.

Ali Abu Zour lived in a village near Jaffa that no longer exists. The residents of Abu Kishk fled or were forced from their homes in 1948.

In 1950, Ali Abu Zour and his family wound up in Balata, the year that the United Nations set up a refugee camp there.

Mr Abu Zour recalled the small collection of tents. Balata is now the biggest of the Palestinian refugee camps on the West Bank, a concrete jumble, home to more than 20,000.

Shortly after arriving in 1950, his father was given the chance to buy five dunams (half a hectare) of land, close to the camp, for 75 Jordanian dinars.

Mr Abu Zour says his father barely considered the offer, telling the vendor that he was planning to stay only a week or two, or a month at most.

Mr Abu Zour laughed. "And here I am, nearly 60 years later."

He insists that he keeps alive the dream of returning to what he says were the 200 dunams of land his family owned in Abu Kishk.

Mr Abu Zour looks younger than his 71 years. He has 12 children: 10 daughters and two sons. A third son died in the first intifada, killed in front of Mr Abu Zour eyes by an Israeli soldier. He did not go into details. "But it is still very difficult," he said.

A STORY FOR NAKBA DAY

Before we left his shop, Mr Abu Zour asked that we stay and listen to a story; a story for the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (the "catastophe" - the name given by Palestinians and Arabs to the founding of the State of Israel) commemorated on 15 May:

During the 1973 war (Israel against Egypt and Syria), we were sitting in my house watching Syrian TV while they were covering the fighting.

My older sister was sitting behind me. She is dead now.

And we saw a picture on the Syrian TV when they captured an Israeli air force pilot. We saw that he was injured.

My older sister, she said: "Haram [Shame]! O my God, he's injured."

I told her: "He's Jewish, he's Israeli," because I thought she didn't realise.

She said that she knew.

"Look my brother, I'm a mother. And I look at him now as a mother. And I know that his mother may be seeing these pictures, and her heart is breaking," my sister explained.

If Umm Ishaq became the prime minister in Israel, and Umm Ibrahim the president in Palestine, then there would be peace

And I said to my sister: "If I thought that we can pray for anyone other than God, I would pray for your great emotions, because of what you are feeling."

Her name was Umm Ibrahim [the mother of Ibrahim]. And she just had one cow in the family. Once she went to check the cow. In her way were some Israeli soldiers. They threw a tear gas grenade at her. And she died from this tear gas.

In her heart she had mercy for everyone, even for her enemies… those same enemies who ended up killing her and her people, and stealing her land. But this didn't do her any good - this mercy. She was killed by the Israelis.

I don't want to blame anyone falsely. I do know that there are men and women in Israel who have mercy in their hearts.

Once at the entrance to the camp at Balata, I saw lots of Israeli soldiers. And there were a few kids who were getting ready to throw stones.

One of these soldiers, he saw me. He walked straight up to me and he said to me: "Please tell these kids not to throw stones, because my mother she told me not to shoot anyone."

At this time, I remembered my sister Umm Ibrahim. I thought that they - the Israelis - have Umm Ishaq [Ishaq being the Arabic for Isaac - a popular Jewish name].

If Umm Ishaq became the prime minister in Israel, and Umm Ibrahim the president in Palestine, then there would be peace.

The good news, for Or Cohen, is that she has managed to coax people out of their houses in Sderot.

"Everyone is so sad and so anxious," she says. "People told me they were afraid to leave their homes".

In the end, though, a little more than 100 people - mainly residents from Sderot - turned up at the town's new community centre to join in that evening's celebrations marking the festival of Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish "New Year for Trees".

Ms Cohen had organised the entertainment.

"It should be a celebration," she told me. "It is a happy festival."

But at the same time, ask anyone in Sderot, and they will say, as Ms Cohen puts it: "We are living in a war."

'Trauma'

For the past seven years, Sderot has lived under a daily volley of rockets and mortars, fired by Palestinian militants in northern Gaza.

Some of the teenagers who have come to the Tu B'Shevat celebrations broke away from the tables covered with dried fruit, soft drinks and wine, to try to explain what passes for normality in their town.

"We hear the alarm," Daniella says. "We run to the shelter, we wait 20 seconds, we hear the boom, and then we go out again."

Bakia says: "It affects everything. I was in Jerusalem the other day, and I heard the noise of something fall off the shelf, and I started running."

Vered says she is counting the days until she can leave Sderot. She is only 17, but already she has decided: "I don't want my kids to grow up here, with the trauma."

When they aim at Sderot, they aim at all of us, at the ability of Israelis to live normally Ariel Horowitz Often the complaint in Sderot is that the government and the Israeli public barely notice, let alone understand, what life is like in a community bordering northern Gaza.

Ariel Horowitz insists he is one of those who do sympathise.

He is one of two professional musicians who have travelled down from Tel Aviv to perform at tonight's event in a show of support.

"The war stops here in Sderot and doesn't get Tel Aviv, only because right now the Palestinians can't reach Tel Aviv," he says.

"But when they aim at Sderot, they aim at all of us, at the ability of Israelis to live normally."

That view is widely shared inside Israel. And it has led to pressure on the government to do, well, something.

No easy options

Over the weekend, the blockade on supplies into Gaza was tightened further.

That has now been eased, at least for the time being.

But a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, Arye Mekel, said his country in no way shared the view expressed by some UN and EU officials that the blockade amounted to collective punishment.

"It is a message to Hamas, and hopefully the people in Gaza, who by the way elected Hamas as the government, to put pressure on that government," he says.

There are few Israelis who believe there are any easy options with Gaza.

There is a desire for the government to do something to stop the missile attacks but there is no great appetite, even in Sderot, for a large-scale, long-lasting incursion.

For the time being, the Israeli government is sticking to a combination of intense economic pressure and air and ground attacks against suspected militants.

Gil Kopach, the other Tel Aviv musician to have come to the community centre in Sderot, echoes the frustration of many when he turns on international criticism of Israeli actions.

His question: "What would you do?"

"It's very delicate," he says. "Israel sets itself very high standards. We can't just go and bomb Gaza."

"We have a liability for our situation and for their situation. We want to live in peace, but what would you say if France or Ireland bombed you?"

One refrain you hear time and again in Sderot is: "We have been living under rocket attack for years - how long can this continue?"

The grim precedent in this part of the world is that it can continue for plenty of time yet.