Israeli security forces are stoned by Palestinian youths

He explains the individual cost of the conflict that has raged since last September.

Now, with an increasing frequency of shelling, incursions, and shootings, it seems everyone living in the Gaza Strip not only knows someone who has been wounded or killed, but also knows someone who is too scared to leave home.

In the last few weeks, Israeli forces have repeatedly crossed into Palestinian territory to hit at what they say is the root of the violence.

Wherever mortars are fired, and where they might be fired, tanks and bulldozers have rolled into that terrain and flattened everything in sight.

The aim of what Palestinians call this 'wrecking campaign' is to clear lines of sight from Israeli positions to populated areas, from where guns, mortars, and grenades can be fired into Israeli settlements.

Impact on the mind

But the Palestinians say these 'invasions' amount to an escalating dirty war, aimed at shaking up Palestinian people, destroying their infrastructure and bringing the territories to their knees.

A Palestinian girl takes to the streets to shout anti-Israeli slogans

In a northern Gaza hospital, residents of Jabalya camp were recovering from injuries sustained in an attack by helicopter gunships on a police compound inside the camp.

The director of the Al Awda hospital, Dr Fadal Judah, says those with shrapnel wounds were effectively treated. But the patient he is most concerned by is one who shook all night, despite medication to control his shock.

In Gaza City these days people are getting more nervous, edgier, more irritated.

Marwan Kanafani says even his neighbour has a son who has been drawn into such a state of inwardness, he will not talk to anyone and is scared by everything.

Mr Kanafani says it is the psychological impact of this conflict which will be the most difficult to undo.

He blames the military escalation for fanning anti-Israeli sentiment, and risking irrevocable damage to any notion of how Palestinians and Israelis might ever be able to live together.