Community Razed Along With Its Homes in Gaza

"We lost all of our lives," corrected his mother. "Not just our possessions -- the place where you lived with relatives and friends. You left a lot of feelings there."

"We ate every meal together," nodded Ismail.

Now Ghoul lives with two sons, a daughter-in-law and three grandchildren in the only affordable shelter she could find to rent in a city overrun by new refugees: a two-stall concrete shack previously used to house livestock. Other sons, daughters, in-laws and grandchildren are strewn across the Gaza Strip. When the Israeli military shuts down the checkpoints that cut Gaza into three sections, relatives who once lived within a few dozen feet of each other might as well live in different countries, Ghoul said.

The Ghouls, like hundreds of other Gaza families, are on a waiting list to receive a new house from the United Nations. Families that lost homes in 2001 are still waiting, and the Israeli military is bulldozing houses far faster than the United Nations can fund the building of new ones, according to U.N. records. About 100 houses have been finished in the past year, and another 300 are under construction on a former garbage dump at the eastern end of the Rafah border.

"Even if you have a new house, you can't forget about your old house," said Ghoul, sitting on a stool in the dust of the chicken run that is now her yard. "We've lost all our memories. Our life was in Block O."

Israeli military commanders said that in the course of their demolitions, they have discovered just more than 100 smuggling tunnels.

The devastation of Block O and surrounding neighborhoods and the frequent shooting are the results of "nearly four years of constant fighting and smuggling," said Maj. Gen. Yisrael Ziv, the Israeli military operations chief who was a former Gaza field commander. "Their philosophy is to try to create a war of attrition against our forces.

"The people there were suffering," he added. "Could we have prevented some damage there? Probably, yes. It's not a surgical thing. It's a terror war."

Local residents, especially the matriarchs such as Ghoul, say they are increasingly torn between their hostility toward the Israeli army and their anger at the local criminal mafias that build and control the tunnels.

"We'd tell the resistance, 'If they shoot, don't shoot back,' " Ghoul said. " 'If you shoot back, they'll harm us.' "

Fist-Size Bullet Marks

At 11:15 a.m. on a spring day in Block O, Jehan Abu Anzah sat on a stoop in her rumpled blue-and-white-striped school uniform, waiting for her mother, Azizah, to come downstairs and unlock the front door. A few feet away, Hallah Hamad, a 21/2-year-old, kicked at cigarette butts in the sand of the narrow alley. A team of three U.N.-sponsored psychological counselors stood nearby, advising Hallah's parents how to react when they hear shooting: Remain calm so as not to alarm the children.

Without warning, machine-gun fire crackled through the alley from the direction of the Israeli watchtower.

The adults -- parents, counselors and a reporter -- all flinched in the same instant, eyes searching instinctively for the nearest cover. Hallah, dark eyes wide with terror, clutched her father's worn pants leg with chubby fingers, whimpering like a puppy. Nine-year-old Jehan flung her books to the ground and slammed her palms against the metal door of her house, screaming in the frantic, high pitch of terror -- "Yama! Yama!" -- Mama! Mama!

"All of us feel scared," confessed Bushra Ayyash, one of the counselors, nervously tugging at the black burqa that shrouded her body. "What do you think this child feels, grabbing her father's leg?