There is a desperate desire for normality in Gaza - for full shops, functioning hospitals, open schools, habitable homes and usable roads. For electricity that comes on reliably, skies that don’t hum with drones and days that don’t crackle with gunfire.

In Khan Younis, 54 couples got married at one enormous shared ceremony. The event attracted crowds who clambered on to a smashed-out building opposite the dais to wave at the brides and grooms, and to celebrate. Amid a grey landscape of dust and destruction, the image was one of colour and cheer.

It is a captivating vision of a better world, but it is an illusion. Gaza is still being ripped by tides of danger, violence and volatility. And it all sits within a cobweb of conflicting interests that makes security so precarious that you wonde

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