GAZA CITY — There were 14 of them huddled under the stairs. Israeli shells and airstrikes had long since shattered every window of the Helw family's three-story home. But underneath the concrete staircase, they said, they felt relatively safe -- until the soldiers came early in the morning on Jan. 4.
There was pounding on the courtyard door, they recalled last week, and voices in accented Arabic shouted, "Who's in there?"
As the troops burst inside, family members said Fuad Helw, 55, jumped up with his arms in the air.
"We all put our hands up and yelled, 'We're women and children. We're not the resistance,' " recalled Sherine Helw, Fuad's daughter-in-law.
The soldiers opened fire on Fuad, said Sherine, and he died in front of his family.
There are no independent accounts of what happened that day, when Israeli tanks rolled into the Zeitoun neighborhood on the outskirts of Gaza City at the beginning of the land offensive. The Israeli army, which staged its offensive after years of rocket attacks against southern Israel emanating from the Gaza Strip, refuses to discuss individual charges in detail.
"As a matter of policy, we do not target civilians," an army spokesman said on condition that his name not be published. "These situations are very complex and our soldiers do the best they can."
But interviews across this devastated neighborhood in the aftermath of Israel's 22-day offensive reveal a stream of accounts of violence, anger, loss and defiance. One of those stories is that of the Helw family, who say the Israeli tank columns charged in from the border fence between 7 and 8 a.m. Jan. 4.
Zeitoun is where the Palestinian coastal enclave shrinks to just about four miles across, from the beach to the Israeli border. Residents believe that's why Israeli tanks and soldiers chose this natural choke point as a staging area and forward operating base.
The tanks left a clear trail of churned earth still visible from the Helw family's roof. By the time the troops began withdrawing after a cease-fire took effect Jan. 18, Zeitoun was unrecognizable.
A short walk from the family's house, only six structures are left standing in a mile-long strip of demolished homes and chicken farms and the rubble of a mosque.
Twenty-nine members of one clan, the Samounis, died in this neighborhood, and residents say 27 homes were demolished.
