Not that you were drawing conclusions even before the first blood of this particular episode eh Keith?

Quoting an Israeli militant may be good for the BBC balance in the story, but just quoting their disputed statistics and propaganda on these threads without the rest of the BBC story is disingenuous cherry picking.

If you saw your neighbour's house reduced to rubble and you had the opportunity to try and make sure yours wasn't next, would you be classed as a fighter? Even if you weren't at the beginning of the conflict?

As Steve said, you can walk West to East in an hour and a half in places. Now that Israeli terrorists have made the whole place uninhabitable, I doubt you can distinguish between combatants and civilians. This isn't about politics, culture or land now, it's about living or dying full stop.