Among the people whom the world now calls “Palestinians”—like many of her fellow countrymen living in something less than a country—Fatima and her family were from elsewhere: in her case, Iran, a country with over a thousand years of culture and style. But now her family members were tenuous squatters in the rubble of Beit Hanum, a town of 28,000 people in the northern Gaza Strip. The town was an occasional target of Israeli missiles such as the one that destroyed an electric power plant in October 2006, leaving most families, businesses and services without power. The Israeli army said it was targeting Palestinian militants who were preparing to fire rockets into Israel. Likewise on November 8, a pre-dawn Israeli missile strike on a four-story apartment building in this agricultural town killed 18 people in one extended family, including seven children, most of them as they slept.

Scores of others were injured. According to news dispatches, 14-year-old Islam al-Assamna said she lost her mother, two grandparents and an uncle, and suffered shrapnel wounds to her face and a hand. An American reporter for The Washington Post found her at the Beit Hanoun hospital caring for her five-year-old sister Israh and their three-year-old brother Mohammed, whose legs were severely damaged.

“We were sleeping and then something hit and the windows shattered,” she said. “We ran and then a second shell hit our house. It was all smoky. We were using our hands to find the kids.”

Inside the partially destroyed apartment building, children’s notebooks were scattered about and school uniforms were hanging on hooks.

Israel apologized for the deaths at Beit Hanoun, claiming it was caused by a “technical error.”

The Palestinian government declared a three-day period of mourning.

Qatar introduced a resolution in the UN Security Council that condemned Israel for its military actions in Gaza and “disproportionate” Israeli violence, and called for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area and for an investigation into the Israeli attack on Beit Hanoun. The United States vetoed the resolution.

Fatima lived three streets away from the building where the 18 Palestinians were killed. The deafening sound when the missiles struck awoke her violently from a sound sleep. Fatima threw on some clothes and went out to see if she could help. The scene was horrible. She looked at the dead and wounded in the rubble—that moments before had been a home, with a self-protecting emotional detachment developed through painful experience. Ambulances were already on the scene and medics were attending to the wounded and dead. Fatima quickly returned home lest she be accused of something by the ever-present Israeli spies, and got ready for her daily journey.

That day, like many a day before, Fatima entered Israel through the military checkpoint where all but the semi-conscious among the young Israeli soldiers would vie with each other to see who would give her the standard five-minute interrogation, though from experience they knew she would put up a fuss if they tried to search her with their hands. It was hard for them to imagine that this seemingly confident young beauty came from the squalor of Gaza.