In only one example, in between Deir Al Balah and Gaza City, Israeli bulldozers have razed a 30-meter wide strip of land from the edge of the Gaza Strip down to the sea. Trees, houses, anything in the way has been reduced to a dusty path for re-invasion at a later date. The Israeli army says that its bulldozing of the landscape is meant to destroy cover for Palestinian shooters or those that have fired mortars at Israeli towns. But the visual impact of this newly carved wasteland seems also meant to destroy the Palestinian spirit at its roots - through the land. At the end of a long dusty street, the Palestinian- Israeli flashpoint looks like the set of an old western.
Men sit sipping tea before empty storefronts.
The street s unprotected center is empty. At its end, are two lines of sandbags and three uniformed Palestinian security men. In the distance, I can hear the persistent cannon of an Israeli tank. Three men sit on a stoop. Their clothes are worn and one of them has teeth the color of brown apples.