'The tide has changed'

Israelis divided in the face of growing international isolation

- Jason Burke Tel Aviv and Sderot

Moshe Abutbul, a 39-year-old Bible teacher in Sderot, the southern Israeli city by the perimeter of Gaza, thinks life is OK, even good.

Autumn is on its way, which means his small home is less stifling. He enjoys his work. His four children are well; so too is his wife, an English teacher. As for Israel’s growing international isolation, he is unbothered.

“We are a peace-loving country, but we have to defend ourselves,” he said of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians and devastated swaths of the territory. “Is Israel isolated? I don’t know. Life goes on. It is OK. Life is good,” Abutbul said.

Sderot, scruffy, poor and rightwing, is not a city given to worrying about the bitter condemnation of Israel overseas.

“If they lived here, they would have a different view. Every day we worry about rockets or a raid,” said Eli Lior, who works in a service station. David, 24, a recent immigrant from Russia, said international criticism was a constant in Israel’s history and “like water off a duck’s back”.

Yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu made an angry and defiant speech at the UN in New York, decrying the recognition of a Palestinian state earlier this week by the UK, France, Canada, Portugal and Australia as "sheer madness" and a reward for terrorism.

He was addressing a hall that was largely empty, after dozens of delegates walked out, but Israeli commentators said that the speech was aimed at the only two audiences that matter to Netanyahu: his political base in Israel and Donald Trump.

For many Israelis, Netanyahu's warning earlier this month that Israelis had "no choice" but to get used to growing isolation, "at least for the coming years", merely confirmed what they already suspected.