Inside Gaza, a Landscape Marked by Violent Change

As Some Palestinians Try to Flee, Others Work to Resume Lives

GAZA CITY, June 19 -- At the Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, a man with a three-day growth of beard and bluejeans raised his fist and let out a hoarse scream amid the stench and desperation of the dozens of men, women and children who have been gathered here for days, unable to go forward, unwilling to go back.

"Let us die in Gaza instead of dying in this humiliation," he shouted. "Let us die with honor."

Um Mohammed did not move. Instead, she sat bundled in a head scarf in the intense afternoon heat. Like many of those around her, she first arrived here five days ago after Hamas's militia launched its final push to take control of Gaza. Bundling up her four children, Mohammed had fled Gaza for the crossing, hoping to return to her home in the West Bank city of Jericho.

Israel has kept this border passage closed, citing security concerns and a problem coordinating passage with Hamas, whose military conquest of Gaza has solidified the strip's political and cultural isolation from the West Bank. As a result of the closure, hundreds of Palestinians remained crammed Tuesday inside the 900-foot-long tunnel, living amid trash, human waste and the debris from recent looting that even stripped bare the crossing point's small mosque.

The walk through Erez on Tuesday provided a grim passage into a stretch of coastline utterly changed by Hamas's military rout of Fatah forces last week. The intensity of the Hamas campaign and the accounts of doctors, fighters and survivors who witnessed it suggest that a furious score-settling had taken place between the two largest Palestinian parties.

Evidence of the change was everywhere.

Bearded Hamas gunmen shouted "Welcome!" to visitors from checkpoints that were operated by Fatah-controlled forces last week. Elsewhere, victorious Hamas fighters tidied up the grounds of battered Fatah security posts, showing off now-empty cells where some of their leaders were held and allegedly tortured more than a decade ago.

Life appeared to be slowly returning to what passes for normal in the Gaza Strip, where 1.4 million people live along a narrow, resource-free coastline hemmed in by Israeli travel restrictions. Most Gazans -- including important members of the Hamas leadership -- are refugees or descendants of refugees from the war almost six decades ago that accompanied Israel's creation.

People filled this city's streets to stock up on food and medicine, fearing imminent shortages. Under a tangerine setting sun, scores of children swam in the Mediterranean, the beach dotted with colorful umbrellas and even a yellow Fatah banner. But it was the green Hamas flag that flew over military posts the group had taken over last week, replacing the red, black, white and green Palestinian national flag

"Smile," said Raji Sourani, 53, the director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. "You are in Gaza."

Sourani, a quiet, balding lawyer, characterized the factional fighting that swept Gaza as "sad, bad, bloody, and extremely bitter." His organization placed the final death toll at 146 Palestinians, 36 of them civilians, including five children and eight women.

After investigating claims of executions, Sourani said three fighters were shot dead at point-blank range while recovering from wounds in Gaza's hospitals. Many other summary executions happened in the streets, he said, implicating both Hamas and Fatah gunmen.