Garbage, looting and raw memories of Hamas executions

GAZA STRIP - The first image one sees when entering the Gaza Strip is the "sleeve," the concrete corridor of the Erez crossing where some 150 Palestinians, mostly young, lie on cement benches. They have been waiting six days to be allowed into Israel.

The mood is nervous and tense. Trash is piling up all around. Those waiting claim to be members of Fatah, and they all want to be allowed to cross to Ramallah, fearful for the fate of their relatives who have stayed behind.

An old woman is also waiting on a bench: she has been scheduled to undergo a back operation at Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem.

A young Israeli walks toward them and delivers milk, water and bread.

The Palestinian side of the "sleeve" is completely destroyed: Palestinians removed the tin roofing and carted it off for sale. Holes were dug in the cement floor, and water pipes removed.

About one and a half kilometers after Erez, there is an isolated outpost of Hamas.

The taxi slows and passes the outpost without any checks. We are then moving fast toward the Jabaliya refugee camp. There, in a burned-out home, sit the widows of Jamal and Majid Abu Jaydan, two senior Fatah members in the camp, brothers, who were executed by their enemies. Sometime last week, around noon, gunmen of Hamas' Izz al-Din al-Qassam arrived at the house, surrounded it and opened fire.

The widow of one of the brothers, Mona, sits on the floor of the destroyed house and hugs the burned clothes of her husband. She says that after a gun battle of some six hours, the Hamas gunmen planted explosives at the entrance of the home, injuring her husband. Jamal was hurt in the face but he managed to escape from the house toward the Kamal Radwan hospital. At the gate of the hospital the Hamas gunmen caught up with him and shot him dead.

His brother was also killed there, an hour later.

The corpses of the two brothers were delivered to the family a day later, but during the funeral Hamas gunmen attacked the procession, injuring five youths. The family had to flee, leaving the bodies by the graves, unburied. The family says Hamas also fired at the bodies. Only an hour later was it possible to bury them.

Two more homes in a narrow street are burned. Next to them an ice cream vendor is calling for customers. The vendor's speaker is deafening, but it is not announcing an Islamist revolution, only the price of cucumbers and tomatoes in the back of the pick-up truck. The markets in the Gaza Strip are full, and there is no sense of shortages - yet.

There are not many gunmen visible, and most of the roadblocks have been lifted.

The Strip is also not covered in green Hamas flags, and the photographs of Yasser Arafat have not been vandalized. The new police commander of the Jabaliya camp, Mohammed Abu Sisi, tells us that a new order was issued against men walking around with their faces covered.

He also says that contrary to its predecessor, the new police force has the authority to put an end to the violent clashes between clans that had been commonplace in recent months.

The headstone for the unknown soldier, set up by Fatah at building housing the Gaza legislative council, has been removed. At the Preventive Security headquarters, a tiny Hamas flag is being flown on top of an antenna.

At the entrance of the ruined home of Mohammed Dahlan, who set up Preventive Security, the last floor tiles are being removed and loaded onto a donkey cart. Nothing is left of the house except its walls.

On the eighth floor of a nice-looking apartment building sits General Jamal Kid, the head of the Fatah National Security forces. No one has touched him. He says that he decided to stay with his men, mostly because he is worried about his wounded soldiers lying in Shifa hospital. He speaks on the telephone a great deal with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and says he has not been given any definitive instructions. Hamas has called him to go back to his office. For now, he is staying at home.

The wounded in the hospital were shot in the legs by Hamas and fear they will face amputation. Some are afraid to go to Israel for treatment and lean toward the Egyptian option. One of the injured was abducted by Hamas, released in a deal and then shot in the back. He is paralyzed now.

Islam Shawan, the new spokesman at the Preventive Security headquarters, says he feels strange. "For years they would bring us here for interrogation and torture, and now the headquarters is under our control."

Why did you do this? I ask.

"You feel secure in Gaza today?" he asks.

"The truth is that for a long time I have not felt so safe in Gaza," I answer.

"There is your answer," Shawan says.

Catrin Ormestad is a Swedish journalist who lives in Israel and is writing a book about the Gaza Strip.