Right now, the daily threat of death and violence that both Israeli Jews and Muslim Palestinians have lived through for decades is probably worse than it's ever been - if that's possible. The cease-fire, such as it is, is very much an on again, off again thing - very, very brittle. Meanwhile only an hour or so's drive from here, shocked Gazans are still picking through the rubble after the massive Israeli assault said to have cost 1,300 or more Palestinian lives. During the hectic fighting last month, the world's media wasn't allowed into Gaza. But Dateline's newest recruit, Evan Williams, still managed to pull together his report for tonight's program - with a lot of help, it should be said, from our local producer inside Gaza City. Here's Evan, and a warning - there are some pretty disturbing images in his report.

REPORTER:     Evan  Williams

 When the siren sounds you have 15 seconds to find cover – even if it's just a gutter. Israel says as many as 750,000 Israelis have lived under the threat of rocket attack for the past eight years.

Right, so that was an incoming rocket from Gaza into Ashqelon.

This is what a Qassam rocket does when it hits a house. The owner of this building, Eti, is going inside for the first time since her home was hit.

ETI (Translation): Thankfully it happened during the day, not at night, otherwise my children would have been killed. This is my younger daughters’ room, everything is destroyed, all the walls.


Eti's daughter Mazi. This is her bedroom.

MAZI (Translation): I was at work, if I’d been at home I would have been killed. As it is, I suffer great anxiety. The second time... And I’m getting therapy, I have emotional problems.

Despite the rocket attacks I still wasn't prepared for the depth of anger this family felt towards Palestinians.

MAZI (Translation): They all need to be burned, the families, the children. Simply destroy them.

There's another siren - another 15 seconds to find safety. We all run for the family shelter. Because of the rockets the council in the southern Israeli city of Ashqelon now operates out of an emergency command centre, an underground bunker. They've had enough of the rockets, the fear and the stress and they want Israel to strike back.

MAN: We were turning the other cheek until it reached an intolerable situation. I mean, think about it - if Perth or Melbourne or even a small village in Australia was hit by enemy fire, the citizens would expect that the State would respond immediately.

On December 27, Israel did respond - A bombardment from the sea, land and air before a ground assault led by tanks. Its stated objective - stop the rockets – but many believe the massive attack was really aimed at removing Hamas, the hardline Islamist organisation that has for two years ruled the Gaza Strip.

International media, barred by Israel from entering Gaza, were reduced to peering over the border. But as the attack continued, Dateline made contact with an old colleague on the other side of the wire. This is Rayeed Al Atamna. He has lived and worked in Gaza all his life. He owns a taxi and helps television reporters produce their stories. He risked his life to get these images to Dateline.

This is the scene at the local hospital. Outside, he found men frantically searching for friends and relatives. Inside, the bodies of dead children were hastily stored in the morgue before the next attack, when more dead and injured would arrive. Almost two-thirds of Gaza's population are women and children, and as the extent of the civilian toll found its way to the media it triggered outrage around the world. Like many here, Rayeed has seen his share of grief. In 2006, an Israeli tank shell destroyed his house, wreaking havoc on his extended family.

RAYEED AL ATAMNA (Translation): After what happened to us two years ago when ten family members were killed, I wanted to live here so my kids could feel safe. But the whole Gaza has become unsafe. This is Tel el-Hawa, where I wanted to live, I didn’t expect Israeli tanks would reach it. I thought people here lived in paradise while we lived in hell. Now no Palestinian lives in paradise, everyone is targeted and at risk of being killed.

As Israeli forces pushed into Gaza, more and more civilians tried to flee the attack. And as Rayeed was out working for Dateline he received another blow - the Israelis had struck at his latest house.

RAYEED AL ATAMNA (Translation): On the eighth day my house was bombed by an Israeli missile, so I went outside and ran to my father’s house nearby. In the end there were 37 of us staying there without any means of survival, and my father, mother and brother suffer from diabetes.

As fighting erupted all around them the entire household of 37 had to flee.

RAYEED AL ATAMNA (Translation): We carried our children and walked, carrying a white flag, for about two kilometres until we reached an inhabited area where we could see human beings. Our lives were in grave danger, death was a certainty. We did not even dream of staying alive. When we arrived at the square everyone had received news that the house had been destroyed on top of us. This is our life and our story as Palestinians in Gaza.

 During one of the brief lulls, Rayeed found people desperately searching for safety.

RAYEED AL ATAMNA (Translation): Look at these people being displaced like I was. They take blankets with them because it is very cold but I left home without even a blanket. I left without a blanket to protect my children from the cold.


This is the suburb of Zeitoun. More than 60 people sought shelter in a house here, encouraged, they say, by Israeli soldiers. What happened next may end up being one of the conflict's most serious breaches of international humanitarian law. As they huddled together in the house, it was shelled by the Israeli military, leaving 40 people dead. Soon after the bombing, I sought the Israeli Government's response to claims the house was deliberately targeted

REPORTER: I mean - I need to be very clear on this, because there are people in hospital, in Shifa Hospital, who claim to be survivors and claim that 40 people were killed in there.

ANDY DAVID, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTRY: Nobody from the Red Cross saw it with his own eyes or was present there. What they are saying is that this is a hearsay - "people told us that this has happened".

REPORTER: So the official position is it didn't happen at all?

ANDY DAVID: If people were injured or killed that day, it didn't happen in that house in Zeitoun.

REPORTER: So some people might have been killed, but you're saying the incident that is claimed - which is the death of 40 people in one home - didn't happen?

ANDY DAVID: The way it's being portrayed is false.

REPORTER: Well, either the house was shelled or it wasn't - it's one of those things, isn't it? Either 40 people died in that house or they didn't.

ANDY DAVID: Not on that day, not by our forces and we didn't move anybody from that building.

REPORTER: Did it happen on another day?

ANDY DAVID: It could have happened on another day, somewhere else, maybe not 40 at the same time.

REPORTER: What do you think is the truth of that situation? Do you think ANYBODY died on that day in that incident?

ANDY DAVID: I don't know. I don't know.

The Israeli Defence Force now says it takes the Zeitoun incident very seriously and is investigating it. Whatever the outcome of their investigation, horror stories from Zeitoun continue. This woman, Um Farai Sammouni, speaking from her hospital bed, describes another attack by Israeli forces.

UM FARAI SAMMOUNI (Translation): They came right up to the door of the room, they asked in Hebrew for the owner of the house, Abu Faraj understood so he went out with raised hands, but they started shooting at him. He fell to the ground dead. We were all in the room, 20 of us. They opened fire on the room, spraying it with bullets. Some were injured, others killed… my young stepson was killed. My 20-year-old son was shot here, he is in hospital now, my stepdaughter was hit in the head by shrapnel, my other two sons were also hit by shrapnel and so was I. What can I tell you? It was a tragedy, a nightmare.

The families were then moved to another area, the young men told to strip off, and the nightmare continued.

UM FARAI SAMMOUNI (Translation): The young men started to undress - then they said “Run”! We asked “Where should we go?” They said “Run”, so we did. I was injured in my back - it was all riddled with shrapnel. My stepson was bleeding from the chest - he was hit in his heart and his head. He was bleeding, he’s four years old. We stayed there till the next day, bleeding, begging for the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, an ambulance – but no one answered us – they said the road was closed. The next day my stepson died and I started bleeding heavily from my back.

Red Cross workers had tried to enter the suburb but say they were stopped by Israeli soldiers.

ANNE SOPHIE BONEFELD, RED CROSS: When we finally succeeded in going to the area we managed to search about approximately 10 houses on that day and found dead people on mattresses, children who were extremely, extremely weak because of no food, no water, people in a very, very desperate situation.

The Red Cross says under international humanitarian law troops must treat or allow the treatment of wounded civilians. In this case, it would appear, Israeli troops made sure that neither occurred for four days.

ANNE SOPHIE BONEFELD: What is certain is that the Red Cross is in absolute shock over this episode. It was very, very shocking to see also that there were Israeli soldiers nearby. We presume they knew very well that there were children, there were wounded and so on, inside these houses. We were even told to leave the houses and not go in there. What's very shocking to us is that that was allowed to take place.

Just beyond Jerusalem, the West Bank is what the UN calls Israel's occupied Palestinian territory. Israel uses this vast wall and more than 600 checkpoints like this one, it says, to stop suicide attacks on Jewish civilians. Inside the wall in the city of Ramallah, I found Palestinians venting their anger at the attack on Gaza the only way they could. But there is tension here between the Palestinians themselves as well. The West Bank is ruled by the other main Palestinian faction, Fatah - bitter rivals of Hamas. And soon I found any Hamas supporters in the crowd were being arrested, beaten and dragged away by Fatah's US-trained security forces - and they didn't want me filming it.

REPORTER: Right, so that was what looked like Fatah intelligence taking away people from the demonstration and when I tried to film it they grabbed and tried to destroy the camera. They told me to go back to the demonstration, not to film that.

Israel – and the West - would like to see the more moderate Fatah back in control of Gaza, replacing the Islamist Hamas.

CROWD (Translation): O Gaza, you are our pride! Our West Bank and Gaza are our pride!

But some Israeli commentators believe Israel's attack on Gaza has backfired and actually strengthened Hamas. They say Israel could have done a deal with Hamas, ending the rockets by lifting a 2-year economic blockade of Gaza that's been aimed at forcing Hamas from power.

GIDEON LEVY, ISRAELI JOURNALIST: The militants, the extremists, the hatred towards Israel is today much stronger than three weeks ago. The Qassams didn't stop until now, and if they would stop they would stop - so an agreement which we could have achieved also without this terrible war. So by any parameter this war was unnecessary, in my view criminal, inhuman, maybe the most brutal and cruel war that Israel had launched ever against the Palestinian people, against civilians, against maybe the most helpless population in the world, because I cannot recall one war in history that was launched against a people that is under siege, which lives between fences, where refugees didn't even have anywhere to run to - unlike the Lebanese war where people had some kind of backyard to run to - to escape, in this case those poor civilians didn't have a place to escape to.

Yossi Alpha is a former senior Mossad official. He doubts the whole strategy of trying to undermine Hamas.

YOSSI ALPHA, FORMER MOSSAD OFFICIAL: We have been singularly unsuccessful over the years whenever we attempted to manipulate the nature of a neighbouring Arab regime. Go back to Lebanon in '82, '83. We kicked out the PLO and got Hezbollah. We installed Bachir Gemayel as president and he was assassinated. And the rest is history as they say. In 41 years there have been a number of attempts to manipulate the nature of the Palestinian leadership. They all backfired. So you may - at huge effort - get rid of Hamas, but instead of successfully reinstalling the PLO in Gaza you might get something worse. And from that standpoint it simply wasn't worth an effort... it would be totally counter-productive.

After the 3-week Israel offensive had ended, Rayeed was reunited with his wife and children and saw for the first time the rubble that was once his home.

RAYEED AL ATAMNA (Translation): I’m walking on my ruined house, I didn’t recognise it – I couldn’t find my own home. I could not tell mine from my brothers’, my neighbours’.. Maybe – you see that mattress? This was my sons’ room, I used to put my sons to bed in this room, this was the boys’ room and there is the girls’ room – but I can’t find it. I can’t tell where it was. There was the girls’ room! Around here, if I’m right.

Israel says it killed 300 of the estimated 10,000 Hamas militants and severely disrupted the ability to fire rockets. But an estimated 1,000 civilians were also killed and 5,000 wounded - many of them women and children. Senior UN officials have called for war crimes investigations. The Israeli Government rejects the accusations. But some commentators aren't convinced

GIDEON LEVY: War crimes is not a question of opinion - War crimes is a question of facts. And you name it, from the siege - which is a collective punishment, which is forbidden - to shelling civilian population, which is forbidden.

REPORTER: Forbidden under what?

GIDEON LEVY: Under international law - you don't shell, you don't use cannons, you don't use tanks against heavily dense civilian population. You don't use white phosphorous, you don't shell hospitals, you don't shoot convoys of supply, you don't shoot at medical crews, at ambulances - all things Israel has done in this conflict, in this war. I mean, the list is so long - it is at least as long as the list of civilians which were killed for nothing in this war.

Thousands of Gazans have now lost their homes and their means of making a living. Rayeed Al Atamna is amongst them.

RAYEED AL ATAMNA (Translation): Even the car with which I made my living – I was living off it, you can see it now. Even the tree my father planted did not survive. I didn’t know where my house was or where I was standing. Who would believe that all this happened in such a time period? Who would believe that? That is my family, 20% of them are living on the street. That’s my family and that is my daughter trying to find some of her books – but I don’t thing she will achieve anything. Look my four-year-old girl is trying to find anything to protect her from the cold - that would make her happy. I don’t know what she is carrying – a blouse or something. You can see she has nothing on her feet.

GIDEON LEVY: I think the only achievement of this war is the thousands of injured people, the hundreds of killed people, the over 350 dead children, over 50 babies, the horrible destruction - and we didn't see the full scale of it yet - of Gaza, which anyhow was in a very bad condition, and more and more hatred towards Israel and more and more revenge feelings. This is the only achievement of this war.

RAYEED AL ATAMNA (Translation): We were just about surviving, now what will be the fate of these people, these children?