‘Water off a duck’s back’: will Israel’s growing isolation make its leadership change course?

Benjamin Netanyahu made an angry and defiant speech to the UN general assembly, calling the recognition of a Palestinian state ‘sheer madness’. Photograph: Taylor Hill/Getty Images

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 says 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,” says Abutbul.