Though tanks and bulldozers thrust into Beit Lahiya and the Jabalya camp in the first two days of the incursion, they have now taken up positions at the entrances to the enclaves, creating a surreal division inside them.
The eastern halves of the two communities -- the streets within tank range -- are deserted day and night. Residents say they are afraid to step outside their homes. But farther west, just out of range of the tank cannons and machine guns, the residents nervously scuttle through streets and alleys to shop in the handful of stores that open for a few hours each day. Schoolgirls with white scarves and neon-hued backpacks walk to classes, and neighbors gather at each other's homes to keep an eye on the feared drone overhead.
Palestinians comb through the rubble of their house, which was destroyed in an Israeli assault, now in its second week, on the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza.
(Kevin Frayer -- AP)
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By midafternoon, the bustle subsides and the transformation begins. Children and young men start stretching huge cloth sheets across the narrow alleyways to provide cover from prying camera lenses above. As the afternoon shadows grow longer, even the streets on the relatively protected side of town are empty.
The entrances to some alleyways are barricaded with sandbags. Across some of the main streets, residents and militants have piled sand as high as a one-story building in an effort to block Israeli armor.
On Wednesday night, masked fighters from Hamas's armed wing held a news conference in the Jabalya camp to announce their determination to continue battling the Israeli tanks and to keep firing Qassam rockets. They also displayed samples of their arsenal: three shiny new Qassams, hand grenades and homemade bombs.
The Qassams, which have a maximum range of about five miles, are fashioned from four-inch pipes commonly used in construction projects, fitted with fins and a needle nose. The shortest version is about three feet long and is packed with about nine pounds of explosives. The longest measures more than six feet and carries a payload of more than 20 pounds.
On Thursday, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, unveiled its latest weapon, the Aba Bel -- a fat, squat rocket about 20 inches long that contains about 20 pounds of explosives. It is launched by being flung out of a net and kept aloft with about 40 balloons of the type commonly sold for children's parties, an al-Aqsa spokesman said.
The spokesman said the first of the rockets had been lobbed at Sderot on Wednesday. No damage was reported by the Israelis.
Special correspondent Islam Abdulkarim contributed to this report.
