Residents of Beit Hanun are not born holding Qassam rockets in their hands. Until a few years ago, they used to work in Sapir College, near Sderot - the neighboring town at which they now launch Qassams every day. One of these rockets killed Faina (Fatima) Slutzker, 57, who moved to Israel with her husband and two children three years ago. At that time, residents of Beit Hanun were already completely cut off from their jobs in Israel, leaving them unemployed, as she was. Slutzker was killed on her way to one of the training centers set up under the Wisconsin Plan, whose goal is to encourage people to join the work force. Beit Hanun does not even have a recourse like that for the economic distress.

Sderot residents cannot tolerate daily Qassam fire on their city, even when no one is physically hurt. It is not possible to expect people to live under permanent threat, and the solution cannot be fortifying and refortifying rooms and roofs and emergency shelters.

People also want to be able to live their lives outside such protected spaces - in the street, in coffee shops, in their gardens, or going to and from their houses. Had Sderot been a city with wealthier residents, people who have the money to move elsewhere, it is doubtful that most Sderot residents would still live there.

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Residents of Beit Hanun also have nowhere to go. When the Israel Defense Forces inform them that they must vacate their houses in advance of an attack, they flee to the hospital to find shelter. Some 450 houses were destroyed in the most recent IDF operation, yet after it ended, the Qassam fire continued, and even intensified. When a missile was fired at the house of 4-year-old Bara Fiad of Beit Hanun, it plowed a deep pit in the courtyard, and he disappeared into it.

This reality of mutual misery and mutual intimidation is turning into a dead-end situation. Israel and the Palestinians have been caught up in a dangerous diplomatic vacuum. From a military standpoint, it seems that the IDF has not managed to find a solution to the Qassam fire, and it is doubtful one even exists. In July, when the chief of staff was asked to explain why Katyusha fire on the Galilee was continuing despite the IDF operation in Lebanon, he gave the example of the Qassam rockets fired at Sderot, to which no military solution has been found, either.

When people talk about a large-scale operation in Gaza, it is necessary to remember the facts. The IDF has already conducted large-scale operations, in which it killed hundreds of Palestinians, but the Qassams continue to fall - even when the IDF is in the Gaza Strip.

It is impossible to continue seeking reasons not to talk with the Palestinians. It is impossible to continue setting conditions even for beginning a dialogue, and for any kind of interim, partial or temporary arrangement, or any initiative for the mutual release of prisoners, that could bring relief, even partial or temporary, to both sides, which are both paying the price, day after day. We must seize any thread, however thin - this time, perhaps, in the form of the new government that will be established in the Palestinian Authority - in order to try to break the pattern of vengeance and retaliation that leads only to more suffering.