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“Our play does not mean we hate Israel,” said Abdel Qader Ismail, 24, a former employee of the military intelligence service, with no trace of irony. “We believe in Israel’s right to exist, but not on the land of Palestine. In France or in Russia, but not in Palestine. This is our home.”

The idea was that the West Bank would prosper while Gaza would fester.

Originally, Israel hoped the closure would put enough pressure on the local economy that Gazans would grow frustrated and oust Hamas. But the group's hold on power remains firm. Israel has tried to use the closure as a bargaining chip in negotiations for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, to no avail.

One of the primary rationales for the blockade offered by Israeli officials is the need to create a material and political gap between the West Bank, run by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, and Gaza, run by Hamas. And political surveys have shown a preference for Fatah and discontent with Hamas among Palestinians. But the latest events, the American officials say, have given Hamas a dangerous lift.

The report called Israel’s military assault on Gaza “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”

Late last month I traveled to the region with a group of "Elders," including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil and Mary Robinson of Ireland, former prime minister Gro Brundtland of Norway and women's activist Ela Bhatt of India. Three of us had previously visited Gaza, which is now a walled-in ghetto inhabited by 1.6 million Palestinians, 1.1 million of whom are refugees from Israel and the West Bank and receive basic humanitarian assistance from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Israel prevents any cement, lumber, seeds, fertilizer and hundreds of other needed materials from entering through Gaza's gates. Some additional goods from Egypt reach Gaza through underground tunnels. Gazans cannot produce their own food nor repair schools, hospitals, business establishments or the 50,000 homes that were destroyed or heavily damaged by Israel's assault last January.

JERUSALEM - Israeli soldiers who fought in last winter’s Gaza war say the military used Palestinians as human shields, improperly fired incendiary white phosphorus shells over civilian areas, and used overwhelming firepower that caused needless deaths and destruction, according to a report released yesterday.

JERUSALEM - Israel yesterday deported a former US congresswoman, a Nobel peace prize laureate, and other activists who were arrested and jailed after trying to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

In a related development on Tuesday, two Israeli groups that advocate for Palestinians, HaMoked and Gisha, revealed a new Israeli procedure that makes it impossible for Gaza residents to move to the West Bank in all but the most exceptional of cases. For example, the groups said, under the policy, chronically ill patients, orphans and elderly invalids will not be able to receive care from their closest relatives living in the West Bank if they have any relatives in Gaza capable of caring for them.

GAZA — Dozens of families still live in tents amid collapsed buildings and rusting pipes. With construction materials barred, a few are building mud-brick homes. Everything but food and medicine has to be smuggled through desert tunnels from Egypt. Among the items that people seek is an addictive pain reliever used to fight depression.