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Tal, 7, likes maths, Hebrew and playing hide-and-seek.

She clutches a pink backpack as she clambers into the car for her first day back at school after the summer.

She says she is excited to be going back to school, and says she is not afraid of the qassam rockets.

The crudely made, unguided projectiles fire by Palestinian militants in Gaza have defined normality for much of her life in her hometown Sderot, in southern Israel.

"This is the first year since she was born that she's felt relaxed on 1 September," says her mother, Roha Rubin.

Since June, a truce between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel has brought the number of rockets fired into Israel from Gaza down from more than 50 on some of the worst days, to one every few days.