When your life is made a living hell, when what you eat, whether and where you work, where you go and what you do are all dictated by an occupying force. When you are subjected to constant humiliation and incessant collective punishment , when the land that your parents were driven from is nearby but you cant visit it let alone return to it. When you have nothing to look forward to but a life in a squalid overpopulated open air prison, with the regular low scale murder of your co-prisoners interrupted only by a full scale slaughter every 2 or three years, what do you do?

When peaceful resistance to further colonial expansion is met with brutal suppression, arrest and arbitrary imprisonment , When you face the best equipped army in the world and can not even exit your prison to face them properly, yet are humiliated by them daily, how do you react?? What is a legitimate response?? The Israelis have offered one option alone, give up, and sit and rot in your prison and die when you are old, or resist and die when you are young.

As regards civilian attacks, during the Gaza Slaughter of 2009, Palestinian fighters killed 9 Israelis, 6 military and 3 civilian that's a 2:1 military to civilian ratio, i.e. 2 military casualties for every one civilian.. Israel killed 1,387 Palestinians , 330 of whom , -according to Israel's Btselem organisation- took part in hostilities, 320 were children, That's a ratio of 'military' to civilian killings of roughly 1:4, i.e. 1 'military' casualty to every 4 civilians. Leaving aside the fact that it is a legitimate act under the Geneva convention to use armed force to resist an occupying force.