As Israel prepares to open a ground offensive in Gaza after weeks of relentless bombardments, some residents of the Palestinian enclave say they are ready to fight the Middle East's most powerful military with their bare hands.
"Even if all our men die, we will fight," said Um Moatasem Al-Alami, whose house was hit by an Israeli air strike.
"We are not deterred by all they do, despite the wounds. We will get them out of our land even with our nails," she said. Israel says it is preparing a ground invasion, but it has been urged by the United States and Arab countries to delay an operation that would multiply the number of civilian casualties in the densely populated coastal strip and might ignite a wider conflict.
There are also fears about what a ground invasion would mean for the more than 200 hostages reported to be held there by Gaza's Hamas.
Mohammad Abu Daqqa and his family are not taking any chances especially since Israel mounted a series of small incursions
He left his home in the town of Abassan Al-Kabira east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip because of the intensity of the Israeli bombing. They are staying in a tent inside a U.N. shelter. Like other Palestinians he does not want a repeat of the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe that refers to the 1948 war of Israel's creation that led to their mass dispossession.
"This is our land and they are fighting us inside it, for how long we will be in this bloodshed and this hardship?" said Abu Daqqa.
"Anyone who will come up here we will kill him, whoever comes."
The Gaza health ministry said on Thursday that 7,326 Palestinians had been killed in the retaliatory air strikes, including 3,038 children. Israel and the United States say they doubt the Gaza health ministry's figures but they have not supplied estimates of their own.
Residents of central Gaza said they had heard what sounded like an exchange of fire as well as heavy shelling and air strikes along the border, with Israeli planes dropping flares and bombs. Aside from the fear of losing their land, Gaza residents are facing a growing humanitarian crisis with shortages of food, water, and medicine.
Some aid was allowed in from the Egyptian border but Palestinians and aid agencies say it is not nearly enough.
Israel has already tightened its blockade of Gaza, fully banning food and fuel imports and cutting the electricity supply.
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