No water, no food, no electricity, no escape. Hundreds, maybe thousands, injured who can't be properly treated in hospitals. It's about 17 years since there have been elections in Gaza and it's a fair bet that most Gazans don't support Hamas. On the contrary, they probably live in constant fear of them. Yet the Israeli regime has no compunction in punishing every single citizen of Gaza. All I'm hearing from western politicians is that Israel has been attacked by "terrorists" and that Israel "has every right to defend itself." The disgusting Rachel Reeves was among them this morning. Not a single word against the Israeli regime's repeated outrages against Palestinians. Well Israel has one of the world's biggest armies (bankrolled by the US and for a population the size of Scotland's) and Gaza hasn't got an army. You can't be a terrorist if you have an army, but if you fight back, without an army, after year after year of blockade and repression, and seeing your fellow Palestinians under illegal occupation being hounded out from their own best territory in the West Bank, you must be a terrorist. Have I got that right, d'you think?

As with the civil war in Syria, there are no good guys in this. Just stop shooting, release all your hostages and political prisoners and take a step back from revenge attacks. No more blockades, no more giving Hamas the pretext for attacks. I hear that the IDF has managed to kill some of its own, who were being held hostage, during attacks on Gaza. Great. :-(