Sitting in Safed Hospital, 20 kilometres (12½ miles) from the Lebanese border as the warning sirens went off around him for the latest Hezbollah Katyusha attack, he said: “I didn’t really want to work but we have to. The municipality doesn’t give us the time off because everybody needs their rubbish collected. We are among the very few people left on the streets of the town, along with the bread shops, the grocery stores, utilities and other things that people really need.

“When the rockets started to fall I grabbed hold of the truck to stay upright and my hand got crushed as the winch lifted the bins up. It cut off the tip of my finger. My friends drove me to the first aid station in the truck. I was going to get a bulletproof jacket at the end of the day, it is so dangerous out there.”

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Sulaiman Martin, 23, an Israeli Arab student of chemistry and food science from the northern Israeli village of Gush Halav (Milky Way), had shrapnel in her leg. “It happened yesterday during breakfast. Suddenly there was a rocket falling so we ran away, but ran to where the Katyusha landed. We didn’t know where to go, and then I saw I was wounded in the leg.”

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Danielle Etan, 2, and her father Natan huddle in a makeshift ward below ground. Danielle’s pneumonia is not war-related but they admit they are delighted to be safe from the shelling, which has forced more than 15 per cent of Israel’s population into shelters and blast rooms. “We feel much safer here because we live on the top floor of our apartment building,” Natan said.

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Ali Harb, 36, a van driver, was hit by a Katyusha rocket near Karmiel as he drove workers to a factory. He has shrapnel wounds to his arms, body and neck. One of Israel’s 20 per cent Arab minority, he reflects the usual extreme sensitivity of Arab Muslims living in the Jewish state, muttering only: “I believe peace will come.”

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Leonid Suzan, 52, a Jewish building worker from Nahariya, has his right arm in a sling. He says: “A Katyusha rocket landed near my home. There was a break between the warning sirens so I went to empty the garbage and that’s when it happened. I had a cell phone in my pocket which was shattered by a ball-bearing in the shrapnel.”

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