Community Razed Along With Its Homes in Gaza

"The people who still live in front of the Israeli troops feel more anger than those who ran way," Ayyash added. "They have the fear both of losing the house and of dying from the shooting. They feel their whole society is destroyed."

A few weeks ago, the two-story cinderblock house that Shadia and Abdulkarim Hamad shared with their seven children was peppered with bullet marks -- fist-size circles, jagged gouges big enough to fit an arm through, dozens of openings demonstrating the range of Israeli firepower.

Israeli military commanders said Palestinians frequently use the front rows of houses to shoot at soldiers in the guard towers and that troops shoot back in self-defense or to prevent suspected attacks.

Now Shadia Hamad, 42, whose soft round face and brown eyes reflect the weariness of permanent fatigue, clambered up the stairs to the second floor, offering a narrated tour of her house and her fears.

On a recent day, Israeli soldiers in a watchtower opened fire when her 12-year-old son Alaa went to the roof to feed the pigeons. At 11 a.m. on another day, two bullets smashed into the mirror on the bedroom vanity, inches from 16-year-old daughter Moha, who was brushing her thick black hair. Another day a projectile whizzed over Moha's shoulder as she bent to serve her father a glass of tea in the sitting room. Fourteen-year-old Walaa stumbled and broke her front teeth in the scramble down the dark, rail-less concrete stairwell to the first floor of the house.

At a neighbor's house, out of earshot of his parents, Alaa, brown eyes downcast, admitted, "I feel afraid."

When asked about his ambitions, he said, "I hope to be a doctor."

He hesitated a few seconds, then mumbled, "If I'm still alive."

Last week, as firefights erupted between Palestinian guerrillas armed with crude rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Israeli soldiers in armored personnel carriers and tanks, Alaa and his family evacuated their house, clutching the suitcases they kept packed for such emergencies. By Friday, their bullet-scarred house with its first-floor safe room was just another a heap of crumbled concrete.