Word: beit
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...Gaza Strip is 25 miles south of Tel Aviv, a matter of minutes by helicopter. The military post at the corner of the fence, which was built in 1994 to prevent terrorists crossing into Israel, gazes out over a sea of concrete. This is the village of Beit Hanoun, which merges with the massive refugee camp of Jabalya and, in turn, Gaza City itself. There is no break in the drab urban sprawl until our Twin Star chopper passes the dunes around the Israeli settlement of Netzarim...
...that Palestinian militants will try to attack the settlements during the relative chaos of the withdrawal. If that happens, these tanks will roll in to keep Palestinian gunmen occupied until the withdrawal is complete. Only one dune separates the field of tanks from the fence and the village of Beit Hanoun. It might not take much - a few homemade Qassam rockets - to set the tanks rolling...
...Misery is pandemic: 70% are unemployed, 80% live in poverty, and 13% of the green, arable land has been bulldozed by Israel into barren fields of splintered tree stumps. The Israeli army said the trees hid militants when they fired rockets on the settlement. But the farmers of Beit Hanoun see a more cynical motive. "They do it," said one, "to break our will...
...getting faster with each mission. Immediately after receiving the midnight order to pursue the suspect in Nablus, Dan and his lieutenants began planning the raid, phoning nearby units to ask for extra vehicles, grenades and infrared light sticks to operate in the darkness. In a Spartan classroom at the Beit Lid base that functions as the unit's command center, Dan showed his troops magnified aerial images of Nablus' Old City, pointing out the target house and identifying positions for each soldier to take up on arrival. At 2 a.m., the unit piled into four armored buses and headed...
...fire fight, Dan managed to load his men into the backup vehicles and speed out of the city. It was already morning, and the unit's exhaustion was compounded by the realization that the targeted suspects had got away. At 9 a.m., the convoy pulled into the base at Beit Lid. The soldiers stumbled to their barracks to sleep; after they awoke, they would spend hours reviewing how the operation went wrong. By the afternoon, Dan had moved on. "You don't always get your target. It happens," he says, dripping with sweat from a three-mile run. Then...