Left to Rot in Gaza

"The thing we get most is the horror," said Ibrahim Harb, an unemployed father of 10 in the village of Um el-Nasser. "There is a panic here."

The village, alive with rowdy children one recent morning, sits on the edge of an area in the northern strip that Israel has designated a no-go zone. An Israeli artillery shell whistled high above the Harbs' sandy street, followed by a nearby bang. The children didn't pause from their play.

Among dunes in the near distance, a pair of tires mark a makeshift border. Israel declared the area beyond the tires off-limits in order to have a freer hand in targeting Palestinian fighters who launch crude rockets from there toward the smokestacks of the Ashkelon power plant in the middle distance. Earlier in the day, gunmen from Islamic Jihad had done just that.

"We want them to do this far from us," Harb said. "We live here, and we'll be the first ones harmed."

Until last month, Harb was one of the fortunate 4,000 or so Palestinians with a permit to work in Israel, where wages are higher. When his permit expired in February, it was not renewed, as the Israeli government reduces the Palestinian workforce. Harb's family gets by with help from a Hamas-run charity.

"You sit here, there is nothing, so you go inside," said Harb's 68-year-old father, Mohammed, passing a stormy morning on a bench. "That's it."

The Karni crossing, the main trade passage between Israel and Gaza, is nearby. This year, the crossing has been closed more often than not because of Israeli security concerns. A U.N. humanitarian assessment estimated that the 21-day closure that ended in February cost more than $10 million.

The Israeli military opened Karni 10 days ago for several hours a day to allow essential supplies into Gaza, but closed the crossing Tuesday. It has not reopened, and its future remains unclear, even though the Bush administration has paid to upgrade security, including state-of-the-art cargo scanners.

Nasser Jaber, director of the Palestinian Industrial Estates and Free Zone Authority at Karni, has little to do these days. He manages the compound of 30 factories adjacent to the crossing, a complex built in part with U.S. development money. A U.S.-funded security fence was being installed at the time of Hamas's election. That project and other U.S. development work in the territories have been suspended.

Jaber said Israel has closed Karni to move the main crossing to the Kerem Shalom terminal in the south, far from the strip's economic center. On Friday, Israeli defense officials said Kerem Shalom would be opened on Sunday. "This industrial park was invented by the Americans," Jaber said. "Now look at it. Things are being done you can't understand."

At a furniture factory inside one of the long corrugated-steel sheds on the grounds, 17 of 50 employees were still at work finishing stacks of living room chairs. There is no wood to begin new orders, all placed by Israeli companies.

"This will stop soon, too," said Yusef Ahmed, 27, a father of four children from the Jabaliya refugee camp. "Then we don't know what we'll do."

At Netzarim, where most of the Jewish settlement's structures were demolished during last year's evacuation, scavengers still come in hopes that the piles of concrete blocks bristling with wires and weeds may hold something of value. Beneath where homes once stood, a small canyon has become the dumping ground for export-quality peppers and tomatoes from the Palestine Economic Development Corp.

The company, formed to manage the greenhouses that were bought with international funds on behalf of the Palestinians, is nearly bankrupt. Amid al-Masri, the project manager, said he will recommend that the business be closed and its 4,000 workers laid off at the end of the month if Karni is not opened soon.

Even if it is, Masri said, the failure of the November agreement to keep the crossing running has cost him future investors he counted on to develop the greenhouse operation. He estimated that the closures have cost him more than $6 million.

"The worst time to make a decision is during moments of chaos," Masri said. "And right now we're in such a moment."