Strategic Setting a Misfortune for Gaza Strip Town

Heavy explosions boomed in the near distance, punctuated by the low whine of Israeli reconnaissance drones and the occasional rattle of machine-gun fire. But Abdullah Ghaben, a weather-beaten Palestinian farmer, paid no attention to the sounds of another day’s warfare in the northern Gaza Strip.

Ghaben and his wife, Amira, stood at the sandy edge of their little strawberry patch one day last week, tracing the trajectory along which they found the body parts of their 16-year-old son, Jabber, after he and a group of his young cousins were struck by an Israeli tank shell Jan. 4.

Six members of the extended Ghaben family died that day when Israeli tank gunners half a mile away in the sand dunes mistook the cluster of youths for a cell of Palestinian militants preparing to fire mortar rounds or rockets. Moments earlier, a group of fighters did just that from a nearby field.

Beit Lahiya, where the Ghaben clan has lived for generations, used to be known throughout the Palestinian territories for its sweet oranges and bitter lemons. Now this agricultural hamlet has achieved grim fame as a prime staging ground for rocket attacks against Israel by militants -- and for harsh retaliation by the Israeli army.

The town bears the scars of months of intermittent raids: acres of what had been verdant orange groves reduced to fields of twisted stumps by army bulldozers, homes and buildings demolished or pocked by bullets, streets chewed up by tank treads.

Beit Lahiya has become a case study in the dangers faced by civilians in an area considered strategically useful by Palestinian militants. From the guerrillas’ point of view, the town’s location is ideal.

The community of about 10,000 people abuts the sprawling Jabaliya refugee camp, where many of the fighters live. They easily slip into Beit Lahiya to stage attacks. The town’s sheltering groves and orchards help foil airborne Israeli surveillance. And its proximity to Gaza’s boundary with Israel makes it a suitable spot from which to lob homemade Kassam rockets toward the Israeli town of Sderot, less than three miles away.

Many days have seen more than one Kassam attack issue from the area. When the new Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, took office Jan. 15, Israel delivered an ultimatum: Stop the Kassam volleys or face the possibility of a bloody Israeli military takeover of the entire Gaza Strip.

On Abbas’ orders, Palestinian police and soldiers fanned out in northern Gaza on Friday, hoping their presence would deter the rocket-firing militants. A fragile lull appeared to be holding, but Palestinian forces said if they encountered fighters preparing to fire a rocket, they would merely try to talk them out of it.

Even for the powerful Israeli army, halting the attacks is no simple matter. Typically, the guerrillas set up a simple tripod-like launcher, often equipped with a timing device. By the time the crude rocket is in flight, the fighters have vanished. Human rights groups have repeatedly criticized Israel for what they say is disproportionate use of force in responding to Kassam attacks. After a rocket killed two Sderot preschoolers in late September, Israel launched a massive, sustained retaliatory raid, sending tanks, combat aircraft and hundreds of troops into northern Gaza.

The 17-day Israeli incursion, code-named Days of Reckoning, left more than 120 Palestinians dead. The army said most were believed to be combatants, but human rights groups and hospital officials said between half and two-thirds of them were civilians, including many children.

At the height of the fighting in October, Beit Lahiya’s 58-bed Kamal Odwan Hospital was overwhelmed with casualties. Corridors and a small courtyard were filled with patients screaming in pain, floors were slippery with blood, and the morgue overflowed.

Desperate townspeople buried their dead in makeshift graves dug in vacant lots, because near-constant gunfire made it too dangerous to travel to the cemetery on the outskirts of town.

Israel has said it regrets the loss of civilian lives in such incursions but insists that militant groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade are to blame for drawing army fire toward populated areas and using civilians as shields.

Palestinians in Beit Lahiya say they understand Israel’s impulse to retaliate for rocket attacks targeting its citizens but call the ferocious military reaction indiscriminate and misdirected.

“Every time we hear a rocket being fired, we fear for our land and our lives,” said Hassan abu Shidik, the 21-year-old son of a farming family whose fruit orchards were uprooted by army bulldozers last year as he, his father and grandfather watched helplessly.

Abu Shidik said if he saw guerrillas firing from his land he would try to stop them, even if it cost his life.

“We are like a person who is crushed between two stones,” he said bitterly, surveying the ruined orange grove before him.

“Those who fire the rockets do not care what happens to us. And the Israelis do not care either. We are the ones who suffer the punishment.”