Gaza braces for Sharon to send in tanks in next phase of war

They are coming. That's what most Gazans tell you. The Israelis are coming. But the sand barricades are pathetic. Even a mile from the Erez "safe crossing'' point constructed during the early days of the mad dream of Oslo, the best that Yasser Arafat's legions can do is erect a 15ft rampart of earth and sandbags, with a 12ft gap for local cars – and for Israeli Merkava tanks when Ariel Sharon decides to drive in.

But the cops go on waving the donkey carts past the traffic lights, and the Palestinian Authority guards slumber with their Kalashnikov rifles in their tin shack, ready for part two of the Sharon War on Terror.

The odd thing is that if the Israeli Prime Minister really wants to dismantle the "network of terror'' of which he speaks so frequently, Gaza – the one place the Israeli army has not yet dared to reoccupy – should perhaps have been his first target. For here are militias aplenty, Palestinians who know how to destroy Merkava-3 tanks, who can manufacture short-range rockets and mortars and know the principles of booby traps better than the refugee gunmen of Jenin. As one local put it yesterday: "This place is wired.''