'A little girl played in the sun. She was shot down by an Apache helicopter'

THE warplanes are dropping leaflets among the bombs. As Israeli troops advance through the streets, covered by shelling and air attacks, people are being bombarded with paper telling them to leave their homes. Where can they go? Some families in the north tried to seek refuge in schools. A friend called me asking if I could spare a mattress. His elders had left their home in Jabalia to try to find safety in an empty apartment in Gaza City. But there is no safety.

We are pounded from the air, land and sea. As dawn broke today we in the city find ourselves in a circle that is tightening around us.

Israeli troops are reported to be five kilometres to the north, four to the south and two to the east. To the west is the sea, and a fleet of hostile Israeli gunships. At night the starry sky has given way to the flickering lights of screaming jets, helicopters and whining unmanned drones. Three big explosions threw me from my chair during the night.

What is in those bombs? Even people who escape being blown apart worry about what they might contain. Phosphorus? Depleted uranium? We cannot know, but it is another desperate anxiety. The scale of the devastation caused by the bombing has never been seen before. There are no experts to advise us and doctors are overwhelmed trying to save lives.

A middle-aged man who works for me showed up yesterday as the fighting raged closer and closer. He brought bad news. As he left his home under sporadic fire in the Jabalia refugee camp he witnessed a 10-year-old girl hit by a high-calibre round from an Apache helicopter overhead. Her father was wailing. He had tried to keep his children inside, but the little girl wanted to play in the sun.

What would people in Israel say if they had witnessed that? What version of events are they being given? I am sure if they knew the truth they would be enraged. Our feelings of being left hanging in space is made worse by the fact there are no foreign journalists here. Ordinary people here in Gaza have friends in Israel. Victims of this war include people who have worked for peace. Are they the enemy?

The soldiers are getting closer and everyone is terrified of finding them on the doorstep. Would the soldiers leave civilians unharmed? The warplanes didn't.

And still the planes roar overhead. If the pilots knew what it feels like to be down here, helpless in the sights of their angry aircraft, I truly believe they would abandon their mission.

I also assume that if Palestinians firing rockets into Israel knew how unsettling they are to residents in southern Israel, they would have also sought to express the plight of besieged Gaza otherwise. This must not overshadow that you cannot compare a Palestinian rocket, carrying about 15 kilograms of explosives to an Israeli bomb. It is the civilians who are largely affected. The dwindling progress of peace seems to make it ever more difficult to see the human being on the other side. This is where politics has distinctly failed. Like everyone else, I have no cash to buy anything, even if there was anything to buy. I ration a tiny amount of bread, vegetables and bits of cheese; a few Snickers bars.

But I am seeing resilience that is remarkable. People have nothing, and the expectation of death is constantly there, but they carry on. There is no electricity, no clean water and hardly any civil service. People are beset with a great sense of loneliness, a feeling we have been abandoned by the world. They feel no good can possibly come from what is happening here.

Tonight is a Christmas celebration for our Christian Orthodox friends. I cannot propose a dinner, as I would in ordinary times. It would be suicide for them to leave their homes. All I can do is wish them a happy Christmas.

●Sami Abdel-Shafi, 39, is co-founder of the Emerge Consulting Group which has been working on plans for economic reconstruction in Gaza.