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In the Casbah of Nablus, after an Israeli military incursion this spring, Palestinian families were digging out from the debris of a terrible battle. Nearly every building was pocked with machine-gun fire. Apartments gaped where tank shells had burst through and exploded. Elegant living-room sets could be seen from the street because entire walls had been shattered by Israeli missiles launched from U.S.-made helicopters.
During the fighting, Haytham Shakah, an N.C. State University graduate and a recent father, described the battle to his Triangle friends in an e-mail message that transmitted a sense of growing desperation.
"It is so much worse than what you see on the TV -- no press, no Red Cross, no ambulances," Shakah wrote. "No one can move in Nablus. ... They [Israelis] are shooting 18 hours a day continuously, but thank God resistance is very strong until now. ... Everybody is now ready to explode himself. ... All these cities -- no electricity, no water, nothing is allowed. It is even more than what happened in 1948."
An emotional exhaustion is also apparent among Israelis.
A people who once enjoyed much of life outdoors, dining in sidewalk cafes, strolling on city promenades and hiking on school trips, many Israelis have taken their activities inside, terrified by an unprecedented number of Palestinian attacks on civilians. They talk freely of their fear that a suicide bombing could occur at any place, at any moment. Streets that once bustled with tourists are often deserted.
When Danny Segal, a marketing manager for Ericsson Israel who lives in Rosh Ha'ayin, does take his family out to a restaurant, he seeks a table far from the entrance and considers how to use it as a shield should a suicide bomber strike.
Armed guards, often toting automatic weapons, stand watch at malls, movies and coffee shops. The Israeli government pays for guards at primary and secondary schools. But the latest wave of terror has brought demands for hired guns at kindergartens and day-care centers, too, said Arik Shorer, director of social services for the city of Hadera.
"The city doesn't have money for guards," he said. "The [parents] are afraid to send the children."
And even the security guards are scared.
Dorit Sharon, 24, a guard at the Carmel Gardens Hotel in Zikhron Yaacov, has never been directly involved in a terror attack but said the tension of being on guard for one has made her life "a horror film." For a while, she worked at the train station in Hadera, checking travelers, luggage and trash cans, but the never-ending vigilance gave her nightmares and she had to quit.
"I'd wake up at night; I'd talk in my sleep," she said. "I couldn't bear it."
The worries have rippled through an economy that until recently depended heavily on tourist dollars and foreign investment in a once-burgeoning high-technology sector. Now, Israel's only growth industries are private security and cell phones, because families want to stay in touch when an act of terrorism occurs.
The economic fallout for the Palestinians is also profound.
The checkpoints that Israel uses at border crossings and inside the West Bank to screen for smuggled arms and terrorists make it harder for Palestinians to get to work in Israel and to get their products to Israeli markets. In December, Palestinian unemployment stood at 35 percent.
"The problem is the occupation," said Nader Atta, an American-born Palestinian.
To get to his United Nations' job in Jerusalem from his Ramallah home, Atta, like hundreds of other Palestinians, must pass Israeli armor and traverse the military checkpoint. Israeli soldiers armed with M-16 assault rifles funnel hundreds of pedestrians and vehicles though. Sometimes, there are shootings and tear gas, and more often, hours-long waits in the morning and at day's end. On a nearby hilltop, there is often an Israeli sniper waiting for trouble to break out.
The massive Israeli military invasion into the West Bank this spring spelled personal catastrophe for many Palestinians not directly involved in the fighting. The 25-day incursion was in response to Palestinian suicide bombings and shooting attacks that have killed more than 400 Israelis since September 2000.
Daoud Sabri Hindye, 69, saw his fortunes change from running a seven-story retail and apartment complex in Nablus that housed his business, his family and 13 other families to living in a clutch of dusty tents in front of the building's pancaked remains.
The Israeli military destroyed the Hindye Building for Trade, which Hindye had used to sell cars from Japan, textiles from Spain, electronics and furniture. Everything his family owned -- clothes, jewelry, money, food and even the children's school books -- was buried in the rubble.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said buildings were destroyed if they had been used by people shooting at Israeli forces or if bomb-making materials had been found inside, but Hindye denied that his building was involved.
"We had no problems with any Israelis before," he said. "They should come here and see what happened."
Living with the day-to-day violence seems to have hardened Palestinians and Israelis against each other, so a lasting solution now seems more distant.
Maher Kaloti of East Jerusalem, another UNDP project manager, noted that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are only a fraction of the original Palestine and yet gaining Palestinian independence in that small area has been stymied. Voicing a common Palestinian frustration, he said that if the difficulties continue, Palestinians might as well fight for all of Israel.
"We should take our full right because they [Israelis] do not respect us," he said.
Anat Beger, 41, a potter in a small Israeli coastal village named Dor, said that she and her husband used to support the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, but that terrorism is changing both their minds.
Her husband's mind changed the day he saw television footage of a Palestinian mob lynching two Israeli soldiers who had taken a wrong turn and wandered into Ramallah last year.
"My husband saw that and said, 'That's it, we have to go against them with the same mindset as they, with terror,' " Beger said.
To her, attacks along the Israeli coast, in cities that have been Israeli since the creation of modern Israel, signify Palestinian denial of the Jewish state's very existence. She is becoming resigned to years of more strife.
"It's very scary that I'm raising three sons and one day they might go to battle," she said, "especially for a war I don't even want."
