"What it means is that the Palestinian government is willing to recognise Israel if Israel met certain conditions, including a complete withdrawal from the territories Israel occupied in 1967," a source told Al Jazeera.net on Wednesday.

Speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media, the source added that he expected the "new posture" to be announced officially by Haniya in the coming few days.

The Hamas-led government is coming under intense international pressure to recognise Israel, abandon armed resistance and accept outstanding agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

If true, the new development will constitute a significant departure from Hamas' dogged refusal to accept Israel's right to exist.

Hamas' officials and spokespersons in the West Bank have refused to comment on the movement's willingness to recognise Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state on 100% of the occupied territories.

Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister, condemned the killing of the girl, Hadeel Ghabeen, whose home in Beit Lahiya was hit by two shells on Monday, and asked the Israeli government to exercise maximum restraint.

"Israel has the right to defend itself, but any actions in the occupied territories must be proportionate and in accordance with international law. Equally, we urge the Palestinian Authority to take steps to halt all attacks launched at Israeli targets from the Gaza Strip," he said.

Ghabeen, believed to be aged between four and 12, was the 15th Palestinian to be killed in Gaza since Friday in shell and air attacks. Israel has been firing about 300 shells a day at Gaza at an estimated cost of more than £125,000 a day, according to the Israeli media.

Palestinian militants have fired about 50 missiles at Israel in the past month without causing serious injury.

Yesterday the residents of Al Nader towers, the highest point in northern Gaza, were nervously watching the one-sided artillery duel. Israeli artillery announced itself with a low thud in the east followed by the overhead whistle of a shell.

People hunched their shoulders for protection but then saw an eruption of dust in the valley half a mile below and to the west, followed by a noise like a thunder clap. The Israelis were targeting a field between Beit Lahiya and the sewage works.

Those watching admired the accuracy of the Israeli gunners as shell after shell landed within metres of the last.

As groups of young men watched the spectacle, women put out washing and trucks arrived to sell cucumbers and tomatoes for 5 shekels (60p) a box. The vegetables are normally sold for export via Israel for 78 shekels (£10), but when the goods terminal is closed they have to be sold at a price that Gazans can afford.

Then a sudden scream emerged from behind the towers and a Palestinian rocket headed towards Israel. Its vapour trail disappeared in seconds and it did not seem to make its destination. The streets quickly cleared. No one had seen who fired it but no one was going to wait for an Israeli response. A Red Cross vehicle waited nearby for permission from the Israelis to see what damage they had caused.

Abdel Rahim Ghanaim, 48, runs a shop at the edge of what is considered the safe part of Beit Lahiya. He and his extended family have spent the past two weeks sleeping outside their home in the hope that will protect them from Israeli shells. Mr Ghanaim said: "We are not sleeping and during the day there is no business. No one is passing here so no one is buying."

Said Judah, director of the Beit Lahiya Hospital, said that apart from Monday, when the young girl was killed and 12 members of her family injured, he had received about five minor casualties a day. "It is not like the days of the Israeli incursions but it is very damaging for people psychologically."

Palestinians living under the Israeli occupation are imprisoned in a thicket of physical, corporeal barriers of all types and sizes (checkpoints, roadblocks, blockades, fences, walls, steel gates, roads prohibited to traffic, dirt embankments, concrete cubes) and by a frequently updated assortment of bans and limitations. There are permanent bans, to which various periodic bans are supplemented, such as the aforementioned ban on travel to Anabta. Even without recurrent nighttime raids by the army to arrest wanted men, even without the shelling that fails to stop the firing of Qassam rockets, life is completely disrupted.

The disruption of life and the bans are not reported as "news," because they are the routine. And this routine erodes any hope for a humane future.

Gazan natives are not permitted to be in the West Bank. Palestinians, including residents of Jericho, are not permitted to be in the Jordan Valley (except for those with official addresses there). It is prohibited to drive in a private car through the Abu Dis checkpoint (which divides the northern and southern parts of the West Bank). It is forbidden to enter Nablus by car. It is forbidden for Palestinians residing in East Jerusalem to enter West Bank cities (except for Ramallah). Citizens of Arab states married to Palestinians are prohibited from entering the West Bank.

The soldier at the checkpoint or behind the Civil Administration counter is the last, least important, link in the thicket of restrictions and limitations. The soldiers do not question the orders and bans, but they didn't invent them. They are low-ranking jailors, and behind them is a faceless battery of bureaucrats who enact regulations, constantly tweaking methods of imprisonment and proscription.

The Israeli uber-wardens seem to have special fondness for meddling in Palestinian family life, and not only when one of the spouses is an Israeli citizen. Their agents in the Civil Administration prevented, for instance, entry into the West Bank (not Israel) to the Turkish wife of a Palestinian resident; to an individual whose relative died ("because the relative was not a first-degree relative"); to a woman whose father-in-law died (a relation that is not considered first-degree); to a father whose son had taken ill (with the excuse that other family members had entered the West Bank on tourist visas, and, according to records, had not left the West Bank when their visas expired).

Natives of Gaza who live in the West Bank are 70 kilometers away from their parents and siblings in Gaza; some have not seen each other for five-to-eight years, since they have not received transit permits through Israel. Jordan Valley residents may have relatives living 10 kilometers away who are not allowed to visit them.

Planners of the separation fence have shown not only a weakness for the available lands of the Palestinians, but also a weakness for separating families. If the fence route now being proposed is approved, approximately 570,000 dunams (140,000 acres) of Palestinian land (approximately 10 percent of the area of the West Bank) are expected to be wedged between the separation fence and the Green Line. In other words, they would be essentially annexed to Israel. Residents of the villages imprisoned behind the separation fence have relatives in nearby villages.

One father in Azoun Atma, for instance, relates that his daughter in Saniria, a neighboring village that's a few-minute walk away, is not receiving a permit to visit him. Youths whose families own orchards on the other side of the separation fence are not receiving permits to enter via the gates of the fence and help their elderly grandfathers work the land. Weddings, funerals, olive harvests and mass family events are celebrated - thanks to the initiatives of the Israeli uber-wardens - via telephone, e-mail or videocam, for those who have it.

One can only wonder what the planners of these separations are hoping to achieve by forbidding a grandson to help his grandparents to work their land or a woman to live with her husband, and decreeing that entire villages lose their lands, that is, their futures. They are backed up by almost across-the-board support for any measure they take, ostensibly in the name of security.

They continue to invent prohibitions because there is no one raising a voice against it. And they are responsible for not only seriously disrupting the lives of Palestinians, but also implanting the jailor mentality in thousands of Israeli young people, soldiers, clerks and policemen - an intoxicating mentality of those who treat those weaker than they with impunity.