Gaza defiant amid the rubble

Israeli airforce planes roar overhead as Brigadier Usama el-Ali the head of Gaza's "regional security committee" surveys the destruction which previous sorties have wrought on the ground.
"Arafat City," the main Palestinian police compound in Gaza City, lies in ruins after extensive Israeli aerial bombardments in 2001 and early 2002.

Blue uniforms poke out of the rubble of the building which used to house the women's police department with its adjoining kindergarten.

Flattened too are the offices of the tourist police and the police band, as well as a forensic laboratory put in by the European Union.

A few sniffer dogs, trained to detect drugs and explosives, bark furiously at the edge of what one of the generals calls "a ghost city." Most of the dogs died in the bombing raids.

And most of the Palestinian police in Gaza now sleep in tents, rented buildings and football grounds.

Usama el-Ali describes American and Israeli pressure to "reform" the Palestinian security forces to prevent further suicide bombings as "a bad joke" in the current circumstances.

"The Israelis attack our security forces at the very same time as they and the Americans ask us to exert control," he shouts.

"I want the world to tell me with whom and with what? Our police are now hiding under the trees."