It seems to me that we in the west (at least, those of us who follow the news in papers and on the telly, etc.) only take notice of the plight of the Palestinians when they do outrageous things. In between times, they must think that we think it's great just to let 'em rot. Gaza is not France. It is a little patch of semi-derelict land that has been starved under Israeli siege and blockade for the last four years. You can't expect to make progress for your people whilst firing rockets, we sanctimoniously tell 'em. Well, they don't make progress whether they're firing rockets or not, do they. Their perception is that firing rockets gets them noticed and brings things to a head, and they're right about that. I ask you, though, what else can they do? That isn't to justify in the slightest the rockets, which are abhorrent. But, there, see, I'm falling into the trap of criticising Hamas for a recent flurry of rockets. I'm not mentioning illegal thefts of land, apartheid walls, institutional discrimination against Palestinians inside Israel, the unqualified indulgence of Israel by the west, the bankrolling of a massive and completely unjustifiable army that is in the hands of one of the most belligerent nations on earth in recent history... So whose fault is it? Israel's or Palestine's? Neither actually. It's ours.