Near Border, a Gaza Village Waits on Edge

In this farming village on the edge of the Gaza Strip, dread and resignation cling as thick as the dusty summer haze.

For a week, Palestinian residents have lived in suspense, knowing the town probably would sit on the front line of any Israeli ground offensive in the northern Gaza Strip. So far, Israeli troops and tanks have massed just across the border in southern Israel, within view of those who live on Beit Hanoun’s eastern fringe.

In recent days, Israeli artillery units have fired hundreds of shells into surrounding fields that have often been used by Palestinian militants for launching crude Kassam rockets into Israel. Residents say shrapnel from the Israeli shelling has peppered neighborhoods just inside the Gaza line.

“We’re being affected, even without their invading,” said Mazen Kfarneh, a 31-year-old Palestinian police officer. Kfarneh held up a jagged piece of metal, half the size of a golf ball, and pointed to the spot next to his house where he said it landed during the recent barrage.

The fear in Beit Hanoun is that things may soon get worse. Israel’s military last week dropped leaflets warning residents to stay out of harm’s way, and the spectacle of Israeli forces poised nearby is a reminder to many residents that an incursion could be broad and damaging to their town of 30,000.

“The Israelis are not coming with taxis. They’re coming with tanks,” said a 52-year-old resident who gave his name as Abu Ayman.

Beit Hanoun has been buffeted plenty as a result of its location. Its proximity to southern Israeli towns such as Sderot, has made it a favorite spot for Palestinian militants launching Kassams. Israeli reprisal attacks, meanwhile, have targeted the outlying farming areas. Before Israel exited Gaza last summer, troops at times besieged Beit Hanoun for weeks, bulldozing dozens of citrus and olive groves to eliminate hiding places.

Early today, an Israeli airstrike hit a building in Beit Hanoun that the Israeli military said was used to make and store rockets. In addition, a small force entered northern Gaza, but the military said it was a limited mission to search for explosives or tunnels, not a major incursion.

Israel had sent soldiers only into the southern Gaza Strip, near the town of Rafah. It acted after Palestinian fighters from three groups, including the military wing of Hamas, killed two Israeli soldiers and captured a third during a cross-border raid in Kerem Shalom on June 25. The militants returned to southern Gaza with the soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Israel has demanded his release and threatened harsh action against the Hamas leadership.

Israel said its troops near Rafah shot and killed at least two Palestinian militants late Sunday as they approached Israeli soldiers. Two of the Palestinians were found to be wearing explosive belts, the military said. The account could not be confirmed on the Palestinian side.

Israeli aircraft have hit numerous sites in the Gaza Strip. A strike against an electrical transformer plant has resulted in spotty power supplies in much of the seaside area. Early Sunday, Israel hit the office of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader. The office was empty at the time.

Haniyeh decried the attack. He said that “targeting the Cabinet office means targeting the Palestinian people” and called upon the international community to restrain Israel. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the rival Fatah movement, labeled the airstrike a “criminal act.”

Hamas militants threatened attacks inside Israel unless the airstrikes ceased.

But Israeli officials warned of wider actions aimed at gaining the soldier’s release, and again ruled out a prisoner swap suggested by Hamas.

“These are not easy days for Israel, but we have no intention of capitulating to blackmail,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the weekly Israeli Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. “Everyone knows that capitulating to terrorism today means inviting the next act of terrorism.”

Early today, Israeli aircraft also fired missiles at a building in Gaza City allegedly used by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade for planning attacks against Israel. The militia is tied to Fatah.

The apparently deepening standoff has added to the jitters in Beit Hanoun, which like much of the rest of the Gaza Strip has also confronted shortages of food, fuel and other goods since Israel closed borders after the Kerem Shalom attack.

The uneven electricity supply has shut down fans and air conditioners just as the summer’s heat is kicking in and has cut into the water supply in homes that rely on electric pumps. The lack of fuel has sidelined passenger cars and taxis. Prices of chicken and sugar have gone up sharply, residents said, because of short supplies of goods normally imported from Israel.

“It’s a huge suffering. There is no water to drink. There is no water for showers,” said Kfarneh. He joined half a dozen other men with shovels under a scorching afternoon sun to see if the answer to a five-day water cutoff lay beneath the ground.

Israel on Sunday opened the main cargo portal to allow food and supplies into Gaza, and opened a pipeline to boost fuel supplies, which had nearly run out. More than 50 truckloads of staples such as wheat, corn and cooking oil were brought into the area, the Israeli military said.

Still, amid the uneasiness in Beit Hanoun was defiance over the possibility of a broadened Israeli incursion. Some voiced what they said was newfound support for Hamas in its showdown with Israel.

And there was little sign that townspeople were leaving in significant numbers.

In one home, farmer Kamel Wahdan gazed upon his 12-year-old son, who lay under a blanket, his mouth swollen and face stitched. Wahdan, 50, said the boy had been struck two days earlier by shrapnel while playing near the Israeli border.

But neither that experience, nor the possibility of an Israeli offensive, appeared to be prompting the family to leave.

“Where can we go?” he asked. “We’re not going to leave, even if we all die.”