Israeli tanks withdrew Sunday from a spot of farmland in the southern Gaza Strip, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake after the fiercest clashes since Israel began its offensive.
Palestinian families, uprooted from their homes during Saturday's day-long operation, returned after dawn to ransacked homes. Israeli tanks and bulldozers had destroyed storehouses, knocked down bedroom walls and uprooted olive trees.
Soldiers battered down doors and upturned furniture in what an army spokeswoman said was an attempt to locate a tunnel militants were reportedly digging towards Israeli positions along the Gaza border east of the city of Khan Yunis.
Militants used just such a tunnel last month to attack an Israeli army position outside Gaza's south-eastern corner and kidnap a 19-year-old corporal.
"We had information of tunnels that might be there," the army spokeswoman said. "That is why the check that they (the soldiers) did was so thorough and obviously caused damage."
The Israelis have made similar inroads elsewhere in southern Gaza since they began a rescue operation last week to free the captive soldier. In other spots, however, Israeli tanks have held their ground.
Whereas militants have been largely unable to engage the limited Israeli advance so far, in this rural village where olive trees and farmhouses provide convenient cover, they quickly challenged the Israeli presence.
Masked gunmen ducked behind trees with landmines in backpacks and fired Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades at the Israelis, who responded with tank shells and Apache helicopters.
As militants gathered, villagers came out to follow the unfolding hostilities as if watching a sporting match.
It was a first indication of the sort of guerilla street-fighting in which civilian and militant seamlessly intermingle, that the Israelis are likely to encounter if they come much further into the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian families were caught in the crossfire, as tanks steamrolled fruit trees, and tore up grape vines in their front yards.
Sonia Hamdan, her husband Ayman and their eight children took shelter from the Israeli tanks in a three meter by three meter (10 foot by 10 foot) storage closet. There they cowered for hours until soldiers stormed their home.
"We sat here until 3:00 am (0000 GMT), 10 of us in a pantry," said Hamdan, an infrequent example in this conservative territory of a woman who speaks out while her husband stands silent. "It was terrifying."
Cracked cinder blocks and concrete littered the mattress where Israeli armour ripped open the wall of their master-bedroom hours before. A vanity table and dresser lay on the floor amidst tossed clothes, a hair brush, and a cracked baby bottle.
Next door, on her rubble-strewn front porch, Ibtissam Abu Awad stood stone-faced. She and her husband moved in just three weeks earlier, abandoning their single-room apartment in overcrowded Khan Yunis for a spacious farmhouse in the country.
Her newly renovated home sports similar scars of the brief Israeli search operation - a battered front door, knocked-down walls, and ransacked bedrooms. Unlike her neighbours, the Israelis arrested her husband, she says.
"Things seemed good out here in the fresh air, but it was the wrong time to come here I think," she said.
She solemnly asked advice from visitors who could only ignorantly shrug their shoulders. "Where did they take my husband? Will they bring him back?"
In the end, she said, it's the price Palestinians must pay to defend their land. "This is something we have to do. We must endure and be patient for the sake of our homeland."
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