It is hard to imagine how any sovereign state could tolerate the situation that Israel finds herself in today. Approximately 190,000 Israelis — the population of Brighton — living in southern Israel have been under attack for seven years. The 23,000 residents in the Israeli town of Sderot have been going through hell on earth: 30 per cent of them now suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, 90 per cent have experienced a Qassam rocket falling on their street; and over the past 18 months more than 1,600 cases of trauma have been recorded. An alarm system gives residents 15 seconds to seek shelter. Sometimes there are 20 attacks a day… And the attacks have intensified. In 2005, 401 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip; in 2006, there were 1,722. The belief that territorial concessions alone would provide greater security has collapsed as the rockets keep on coming. In the two and a half years that followed Israel’s total withdrawal, more than 3,700 rockets were fired at Israel — and that figure will be reached this year alone if rockets continue to be fired at the same rate as they have been in the first weeks of 2008. Since 2001, 24 Israelis have been killed and 620 wounded in rocket attacks launched from Gaza. The equivalent attacks on the UK in the same period would have seen 240 people killed and 6,200.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/514296/israel-is-getting-ready-to-invade-gaza.thtml