BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip - When Israeli artillery shells started landing near her house Monday, Saffiyeh Ghraben hustled her children from the front yard into the living room, where she thought they'd be safer.
As the Palestinian family huddled on cushions, they heard a high whistle before an artillery round crashed through the roof and exploded. It killed Ghraben's 7-year-old daughter, Hadil, and seriously wounded most of her other 10 children.
In an attempt to stop Palestinian ‘militants’ from firing rockets into Israeli territory, Israel has begun to fire retaliatory strikes into a larger zone that now comes within 100 yards of Palestinian towns and villages. Until this week, the near-constant barrage of Israeli shells - an average of 200 a day - had fallen primarily into open fields that ‘militants’ use to fire homemade rockets.
Israeli officials expressed regret about Hadil's death, but blamed the ‘militants’ for using civilians as ‘human shields’ by launching rockets near farms and homes.
Noa Meir, an Israeli military representative, said innocent Palestinians should leave their houses or demand that the ‘militants’ leave the area.
‘Unfortunately, when they're being hit, they have to ask themselves why terrorists are exploiting them,’ Meir said. ‘The terrorists have no respect or care for Israeli civilians or Palestinian civilians.’
Should the new measures fail, Israeli officials have made veiled threats in the news media to send ground forces back into the Gaza Strip. Although that's unlikely anytime soon, it would mark the first time since Israel ended 38 years of military rule in Gaza last summer that its soldiers would return to the Palestinian territory on the border between Israel and Egypt.
Israel had hoped that last year's pullout would reduce the number of rocket attacks from Gaza. But the Israeli military said that more than 360 rockets had been fired into Israel this year.
While most have caused little damage and no Israelis have been killed, the missiles are a constant worry. Most of them are small, with a maximum range of 6 miles. But concerns grew last month when Gaza ‘militants’ fired a 122 mm Katyusha rocket, which can reach targets nearly 13 miles away, for the first time.
Since then, Israel has rapidly stepped up its attacks. It's used naval vessels to fire on the Gaza Strip for the first time, and has fired on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' helicopter pad in Gaza City.
It's also conducted targeted assassinations that have killed 14 people, including the young son of a ‘militant’ leader who was driving with his father when an Israeli missile hit their car.
Israel is betting that its artillery campaign will prompt Palestinians to turn their frustrations on the ‘militants’ and their new government, dominated by the Islamist ‘militant’ group Hamas.
But on Wednesday in Beit Lahiya most of the anger was focused on Israel.
‘What have we done to deserve this?’ Ghraben asked, sitting on a cushion with four of her injured children. ‘We are farmers, and all of us are innocent civilians. Not one of us fires rockets.’
Nearby, her husband, Mohammed, picked through the shell of their house as friends and relatives looked through Hadil's drawings of flowers and whales.
Mohammed Ghraben said the area hadn't been used by ‘militants’, who can set up and fire the small rockets quickly from just about anywhere.
Those who try to stop them end up paying a price.
Ahmed Abu Halima said ‘militants’ in the group Islamic Jihad shot him in the foot when he and his brother tried to stop them from using their farmland to fire rockets into Israel in January.
‘Even if we forbid them from coming here, they can go somewhere else,’ the 20-year-old farmer said. ‘Most of the time we don't even see them. They shoot and they leave.’
Leaders of Hamas, which is struggling in its first weeks of power to prevent the Palestinian Authority from collapsing, said they'd try to bring the ‘militant’ factions together to discuss the missile attacks.
‘We want to avoid major suffering of our people,’ said But Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. ‘We want to find a solution.’