A soldier from the Golani Brigade, who fought in the battle for Shejaiya, said it is already being talked about like the heroic fight for Mount Hermon in 1973. He said he had fought an enemy, taken fire from all over, even lost close friends and his direct commander, yet "we didn't see one person."

After a week in Gaza, he said, he still had not seen the face of the enemy.

Instead the battle swirls around them. Militants emerge from tunnels and open fire from the rear; donkeys trot toward the troops carrying a wagon full of explosives; suicide bombers make desperate sprints out of alleys; and an old man, apparently asking for water, tries to toss five grenades at a squad of troops, the commander of the Gaza Division, Brig. Gen. Michael Edelstein, said Wednesday.

He described a street patrolled by soldiers earlier this week, in a small town called Khirbet Khaza'iya, in which 19 of the 28 houses on the central street were booby-trapped. Many have tripwires in the gardens and on the doors, many with double activation devices, meaning they can be detonated from afar with, say, a cellphone. Thousands of homes, he said, have been detonated by militants across the Gaza Strip.

Paul Martin, a reporter for the Globe and Mail, described seeing Hamas gunmen retreating from Shejaiya in women's clothing, with one of them swaddling his rifle in a blanket like a baby.

"It's terrifying," said a combat soldier, who fought in Operation Cast Lead. "The [brigade] intelligence officers scare the crap out of you."

Ibid