No one left in the ruins to hear the thunder

The Times: Our correspondent, travelling in an Israeli armoured vehicle, becomes the first British newspaper journalist to see at first hand the devastation that three weeks of war have brought to Gaza

“It’s not a pleasant sight,” the brigade commander conceded, and he was right. The Gaza Strip was always grim, but 20 days after the Israeli military unleashed its firepower on that narrow sliver of Palestinian territory, it looks – and sounds – like Armageddon.

Under pressure, the Israelis yesterday allowed in the first small group of foreign journalists since the war began. We were not taken far, only to the edge of al-Atatra, a town from whose environs Hamas regularly fired rockets into southern Israel a few miles north. It has paid a terrible price.

The houses and ugly concrete apartment blocks have been abandoned and mostly reduced to shells, their walls pockmarked by shrapnel. The commercial greenhouses have been crushed. The metal roof of what used to be a factory or warehouse has been sent crashing to the ground.

The vegetable fields have been churned up by tanks and bulldozers. There is not a Palestinian to be seen – just the odd scarecrow standing forlornly in the midst of their ruined crops. An empty casino and the odd palm tree overlook a deserted beach and the deep-blue Mediterranean.

It was a stunning contrast to the peaceful citrus orchards, the neat fields of vivid green spring wheat, and the orderly rows of hothouses of southern Israel that we had left behind 20 minutes earlier. But Colonel Herzi, the commander, and his fellow paratroops are not afflicted by doubts about the justice of their mission, or about their overwhelming use of force. If they are aware of the international condemnation of Operation Cast Lead, they do not let it trouble them.

Hamas brought this death and destruction on itself, they argue with manifest passion. By continuing to rain rockets on Israel, it left them with no alternative. “I don’t like seeing these ruined houses,” Colonel Herzi said, “but they didn’t give us any choice except to fight and show them that they should stop and find another way to live with us.”

He recalled the Israeli withdrawal from al-Atatra and other Gazan settlements in 2005. “Three years ago they had a wonderful chance to create with us industry, agricultural areas,” he said. “We left this place in very good condition. But they chose to go in a different way and so we had to fight.”

Avi Ronzki, a uniformed army rabbi with a long grey beard, agreed. “It’s a very righteous war,” he said. “Our army is showing that to beat terror you need to use a lot of force like the Americans in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

Another senior officer insisted that the Israelis were striving to minimise civilian casualties – even telephoning houses before shelling them to tell the occupants to leave. It had to do this, he said, because Hamas was using civilians as human shields.

Colonel Herzi was contemptuous of Hamas. He claimed that it had booby-trapped one third of the houses, left a bomb concealed in a Unicef bag, and chiselled explosives into the walls of a mosque so that its men could bring the entire building tumbling down when Israeli soldiers entered.

He insisted that the Israelis were winning. Hamas had been shocked by the ferocity of the offensive. Its fighters were demoralised. They were engaging only at long range. “They still fight on, but not in a strong way.”

The aim of the offensive, he said, was to teach Hamas such a harsh lesson that it would never provoke Israel again. But he added: “I don’t think this war will bring peace. It’s part of a long process. Because that’s the way they choose to deal with us it’s very important that we win every battle against them . . . Will they leave their weapons for ever? I know for sure the answer is no.”

Full article:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5526922.ece