In Beit Hanoun, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, people do not know if those who broke into four homes five nights ago were the same people, going from house to house, or members of one group which split up. Nor do the villagers know if they were the same who have been breaking continuously into six houses every few nights during the past six weeks looking for Ayman She bat, Nasser Shebat, Ayad Kafarna, Naim Kafarna and Rafiq Odeh. But their style is the same, their clothing is the same and in every place they leave, the same picture appears: the contents of cupboards, shelves and linens strewn on the floor, chairs, tables and closets overturned and damaged, costly items deliberately smashed (sewing machines, fans, radiotapes), most of the glass In the windows smashed and many persons who had their ribs broken or who suffer painf from beatings.

The invaders of five days ago were all masked, say the members of the four families. All of them wore a kind of hat made of stocking which reveals only the eyes. On their hands they had black gloves, some of them with the fingertips cut off, they all wore army uniforms and sport shoes of various colors. They had no search warrants or written orders, and they gave the family members orders in broken Arabic. They were between seven and nine, besides an unknown number of people who were watching outside. They stayed in each home for one hour.

They broke into Ayman’s home at about 1:00 am: several of them entered quietly through the roof to the staircase and others climbed over the high gate and jumped into the courtyard. Ayman’s mother awoke when she felt that someone had clamped a hand over her mouth, so that she would not shout. They arrived at Nasser’s home shortly before 2:00 am. They entered the courtyard through the front gate and through a back fence which leads to an area planted with trees. They opened forcefully the locked door and everyone woke up from the noise. They reached the staircase of Kamal’s home through the roof at around 3:15 and stood next to the steel door. "Who is it?" asked the two women who were at home, and received the answer: "Do not you know? Soldiers of the Israeli army". Later they were told, according to them, "We are from a special unit".

Ayad’s parents were sleeping on the balcony when their courtyard suddenly filled with masked people around 3:30. Some of them immediately began beating the father, Othman Qasem and his wife, Aisha. Someone said looking at his watch (in English): "Bring your son within three minutes, and if not, we will turn the house inside out". Every 30 seconds he then announced that 30 seconds had passed. After three minutes they started "turning the house inside out". Then beat one of the other sons. When his mother intervened: "That’s my son. how are you behaving", the invaders, so she says, beat her up as well, and also one of the daughters, aged 17. Othman Kafarna was already summoned twice for interrogation by the person from Shabak who is in charge of the village, who asked him about his son, Ayad, aged 21, formerly a psychology student at Bir Zeit University. He also asked him what the soldiers did during their searches. "Not true", responded the interrogator, when Kafarna told him his version. Nasser Shebat’s brother, Rafiq, was not believed at the military government either, when he came to complain about the conduct of the soldiers who search at night and about the destruction they do. "It cannot be, we especially sent you the nicest officer", he claims that a "Captain Dan" said. The families also complained to the Red Cross and the UNWRA. One day the soldiers prevented a Red Cross team from entering Beit Hanoun. Another time the team managed to get there and examine the complaints. The search carried out afterwards was calm: "They knocked at the door nicely", says Rafiq, "they entered politely, asked us to empty the closets ourselves, and photographed us while doing it".

Recently six soldiers and Border Guards, without masks, come to the house almost every day, during the daytime. They enter, take a look, and go away. During the night searches not all of them are masked. Usually the inhabitants say, a well-known officer called Kobi, accompanies them. Tall, well built, beginning to go bald over his forehead. On Monday, after a night search, people from UNWRA came to take photographs at the home of Kamal Kafarna. Kobi was outside all the time, looked on, and went away. During the search last Tuesday, the relatives of Ayman and Nasser Shebat told me that someone, evidently the commander, stood outside all the time while the invaders were going out to consult him about what to do next.

A family first learns that their son is "wanted", when an Israeli officer comes and asks where is so and so, and when at checkpoints family members are asked about his whereabouts. "The children do not tell us if they are involved and in what, or what they do and where they stay", the parents, brothers and wives told me. Everyone is convinced that the army and Shabak know that the families do not know anything. For no son wants to endanger his family. Therefore, it is obvious to the families that this manner of searching is intended to bring pressure against the sons, so as to make them turn themselves in. "If they do not turn themselves in", they say the soldiers tell them, "they will be killed in the end".

Except for Ayman, aged 22, who has been wanted for two months according to his mother, the others have been wanted for over one year: Nasser, 22, for two years already, Ayad, one year, and Kamal, 35, three and a half years. "Up to now", says Kamal’s wife, Sabah, "they used to come once a month, searched, but superficially, looked around and went away".

The "visits" of the last few weeks are something new for the families, both because of their frequency and of their violence. The search last Tuesday was the worst, they say. "The soldiers are looking for my brother", says Rafiq, "I understand that. Let them come. But they should come like human beings, not like animals. Why they leave after them so much destruction? They always break windows when they can open them, they throw the radio on the floor to smash it when it is obvious that my brother is not inside it". One time the soldiers asked where his brother was. "I looked into my pocket and said: ‘Here, search here’", Rafiq says. As punishment for his impudence and nerve, he says, they confiscated his identity card and it was not restored to him for a week. During the night search last Tuesday, Rafiq says, he saw with his own eyes how his brother Yusef was being beaten, without being able to intervene. The brother has been a heart patient since birth. In his identity card he holds medical documents testifying about his condition. The documents are written in English, Arabic ("for the Druze soldiers") and Hebrew ("for the Jews").

After the masked soldiers broke in, the family members say, three of them caught Yuself’s wife, Suad, and beat her on the stomach and back in front of all the other family members. Four soldiers took Yusef outside. He tried to tell them that he has a heart diseases, but they ignored him. They placed him next to the car in the yard, he says, and beat him for along time with their fists, kicks, and also with a stick that even broke during the beating. After they turned the house inside out and left, the brothers took Yusef to the hospital for examination. He returned in the afternoon, suffering from dizziness and weakness, his entire body aching. In the course of the same round of searches on Tuesday, so the families tell me, others were beaten as well, some more, some less. Ayman’s mother and grandmother were hit with fists (on their arms, while revolver was pointed at their temples). On the previous search as well, the mother was beaten up, had to be taken to clinic where a damage to her heart was diagnosed. In Kamal’s home, the pregnant sister in law, Mazunya, was beaten up, but not too much.

Kamal’s brother, Ziyad, has not been sleeping at home since he was beaten during one of the searches this month: one of the searchers removed the bullets from the magazine of his gun, put them in Ziyad’s pocket. and hit him on his back with the barrel. Afterwards he said that "This time it was not serious". The beating marks are still visible on his back. Nor does Kamal’s 14 year old son sleep at home. The soldiers asked about him as if he, too, was wanted, and at home they fear that when the soldeirs see him, they won’t believe that he is just a 14 year old boy, and will beat him as if he were at least 18. Since the searches began the children are scared and flinch from every stranger. The smaller ones cry and yell during the search, since they see how the adults are beaten or threatened with guns before their eyes. Because of that Ayman’s small brothers sleep at a neighbor’s home, but even there five year old Zeinab wakes up and shouts "The soldiers, the soldiers want to kill Ayman". When Mazunya’s children cried, she says, one of the masked soldiers ordered her to silence them while forbidding her to go to them and hug them. Ghassan, aged nine, son of the wanted Kamal, is afraid of the army, but now he become used to it. Still, when they broke into the house last week, he pretended to be asleep watching the soldiers through the slits of his eyes, scared that they would beat him if he opened them.

But this time the soldiers were mainly busy with the small grocery store near the house and which supports the family: several hours after the soldiers left the floor was still strewn with boxes of biscuits, toilet paper, boxes of crackers, cans, sanitary napkins, smashed eggs and several shirts on their hangers, No one had the strength or the will to rearrange and clean the store. The messes in the other homes have not been cleaned up, either. Why clean up, if they can come again tomorrow, everyone says. The soldiers even told Kamal’s wife and sister in law that there would be no use cleaning up. "In any case we will come and mess everything up again", they say.

Kamal’s wife complains that about NIS 300 were taken from the store during the search. Ayad’s mother says that there were NIS 1.000 in a drawer in her room, and that the money was taken. She complained to UNWRA, she says. Regulations and logic say, according to some experienced people in Gaza, that every search or handling of belongings must be done in the presence of a family member, so that later there will not be any true or false claims of stealing. But during the searching of the store and that room no one from the family was present. And in addition to the stolen money the searches are always accompanied by massive damage to property.

Less accurate information can be obtained regarding the soldeirs’ attitude towards girls and women. "I am ashamed to tell what words they used to my daughters", says Aisha Kafarna. Mazunya also finds it difficult to utter the words she claims were said to her. Finally she was willing to say that they told her something like "If you do not tell where Kamal is, we will publicize in the village that you are a prostitute". And Rafiq says that the same Kobi told one of his sister in laws, whose husband is detained: "You are alone at night in bed, why shouldn’t I be with you. I invite the entire people of Israel", Rafiq told me, "like friends, to come and see what the soldiers do. Let them see everything the televison does not show. Let their parents know".

The response of the Israeli army spokesman: "An army force came indeed to the homes’ of the above mentioned wanted, who are accused of disturbing the public order and membership in illegal popular committees, in order to carry out a search and to try to locate them. In the course of the peaceful search the families began to riot and started themselves to mess the house break their own property. When the search ended, the residents of the home of the wanted began to throw stones at the soldiers. It should be mentioned that there was no physical contact between the army forces and the residents of the homes. Not one penny nor anything else was taken. There was no order for a search warrant and no search warrant is needed. These are routine operational actions. Search warrants are not required".

The IDF spokesman refused to reply to the question how the claim that money was indeed stolen would be examined and why the soldiers entered masked. Nor did his office respond to the claim that the soldiers use rude language to women.

Last Monday, July 22, I went to meet the families of the wanted in Beit Hanoun, accompanied by an acquaintance, a resident of the Gaza Strip. At the checkpoint before the village the soldiers stopped me and did not allow me to enter. This is a hostile village, they told me. The previous day there was a fight between clans in the village and they said that they fear for my safety. They had no written order and called an officer. The latter arrived, took my acquaintance’s identity card, got into a jeep and said "Drive after me". We drove after him until the Erez checkpost. There he returned the identity card and ordered me out of the Strip. He had no order prohibiting the entrance of journalists or Israeli civilians.

"If you want to, speak to the commander of the base at the entrance", he said. A man dressed in civilian clothes, wearing sunglasses, even told me: "This is a closed military area, why are you entering". Two policemen also checked what I was up to and took my identity card for examination. The soldier at the lookout post then spoke with the commander and announced that I had no permit to enter. "But if you want to, speak with the representative of the Israeli army Spokesman". The representative was not in the office. A reserve officer who serves at the Spokesman’s office and who happened to be present. confirmed to me what should have been known to all: "There is no such thing, entrance forbidden". Together we tried to convince the commander of the base. He insisted that I could enter Gaza City, but not Beit Hanoun. "But speak, if you want to, with the Spokesman’s delegate at the Southern Command", he said. We did. "Do you insist on going to Belt Hanoun? they asked at that office, "The area commander does not really agree". After about an hour, apparently following telephone negotiations between them and the commander, they announced that I was indeed permitted to enter. Even to Beit Hanoun. "But on your own responsibility. And the spokesman’s delegate said: There is no order preventing you from entering any place in the Strip, including villages and refugee camps, unless something unusual happens. It is better to notify the Spokesman a day early. In case, Heaven forbid, something is going on", but that is not compulsory. The Gaza Strip, including all its Palestinian residences, is not a permanently closed military area.