July in Gaza is the month the sun turns punishingly hot, the olive trees grow in abundance and the air reeks of sewage. Those who live here say that, despite the troubles they face, Gaza is beautiful; as evidence of their pride, they direct you past the fringe of old farms to the coastal road and the kilometres of rolling, sandy beach sloping into the Mediterranean Sea. Gaza, a place that has become a synonym for both terrorism and idealism, is as ancient as stones. But beautiful? It is a tissue-thin claim. All I can see are crushed Coke cans, dust and old goats.

An old walled cemetery - Martyrs' cemetery, according to the locals - near the teeming Bureij refugee camp is where Gazans have buried their dead for years. The cemetery, with its unspoken history of complicity, is known for burying ''fighters for the resistance'', according to one middle-aged man attending the funeral of his grandmother. It is a place of honey-yellow earth, wild trees and pale tombs looking like little grey houses. Over centuries the earth has devoured bodies without restraint, and in places it is difficult to tell one grave from another.

Today the cemetery is open and a group of mourners, most of them bearded and dressed in white robes, stand erect over the grave of the old woman. Prayers are said loudly and slowly. Gradually, the older men in the group - the mourners are all men - begin to break away before treading wearily along a dusty path. The sound from a nearby mosque adds a sense of rhythm to the occasion. The men line up, shaking hands with all those who have come to pay their final respects. They nod and whisper conspiratorially and praise God. The smell of sewage is distracting. Some of the younger men look curiously in our direction. One, Kareem, breaks ranks and idles over, speaking in broken English.

This is where he comes with his friends; to sit, to talk and to discuss the intifada. It is a place of both sanctuary and prejudice. They sit in the shadows of the newly dead, near the olive groves and the large trees. Discussing politics in the cemetery almost seems like a rite of passage for young Gazans; and Kareem, wearing wraparound sunglasses, shows me a grave with a photograph of a young man holding an automatic rifle. ''Martyr,'' he says, ''martyr. My friend.'' But this is not the grave I am here to see. Buttressed by smaller, cheaper and poorly finished graves is a large marble headstone, perched near the middle of the old cemetery, belonging to Mohammed al-Dura. He is the ghost hovering over this Palestinian graveyard and, since September 30, 2000, the conscience of Israel.

Earlier I was travelling with Jabr Wishah, a charmer of a man and the deputy director for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, based in Gaza, the first piece of occupied territory handed back to Palestinians under the Oslo accords. Acting as my translator, Wishah is also a prominent figure in the Palestinian national movement. He spent more than 15 years in an Israeli prison for, he says, ''actions against the occupation.'' As we drive to the house of the

al-Dura family, the dense ''resistance'' graffiti that lines the streets in the Gaza Strip is being removed as a result of the resurgent peace process. Palestinian workers are busy painting white over the Arabic slogans that have turned the roads into a call to arms.

Wishah explains that the streets in Gaza used to act as newspapers for the locals during the first intifada, which began on December 9, 1987, when all the occupied territories were under direct Israeli control. Television and radio were controlled, too, so the street graffiti spread news about suicide-bombing missions and other attacks. As we trundle past posters of Hamas and al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades militants, we discuss the story of al-Dura and the claims, according to some, that the boy might not even be dead. Wishah throws his hands up from the steering wheel. ''Are they insane?'' he shouts, sweating now in the heat. ''Who can say this?''

Wishah insists we do not wear seatbelts, ''in case something happens''. The area we are approaching, a tattered intersection that the Israelis call Netzarim junction and the Palestinians call by an Arabic name that translates as Martyrs' Square, is lunar. On all sides of the intersection, Israeli bulldozers have levelled what were once orange and olive orchards. The army said Palestinians had been using them as sniper positions. As a fitting metaphor for the peace process, the olive branches are still buried.

Everything has been demolished except the Israelis' old command post. The cinderblock wall is gone. The bullet holes are gone. The darkened mass of a child's blood on the ground is gone. A small bouquet of flowers rests there, sun-parched and withered.

The flowers mark the spot where 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura died huddled in his father Jamal's arms, caught in a hail of bullets and captured in lurid detail by a cameraman for French television. Reduced to its elements, Mohammed's short life exists in a handful of still frames: the boy crouching, talking, screaming, clutching and then, fatally shot in the abdomen, loosening his grip on his father. Then you watch as his father is shot, round after round, twitching convulsively, before dropping his head. These are the horrific images that have haunted Israel following the start of the second intifada.

The steel-and-concrete Israeli fortress on this unremarkable piece of land is now derelict, abandoned and replaced by a much more heavily fortified watchtower across the road and up the hill. Three years ago it was active, with watchtowers on each of its corners. Under interim peace arrangements, the Palestinian security forces that were housed in a much smaller command post were mandated to jointly patrol the area with Israeli troops. Their post lay diagonally across the junction from the old Israeli position, roughly 100 yards away.

For years Netzarim junction had been a deadly cat-and-mouse flashpoint between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youths throwing stones and rocks. The soldiers would respond with tear gas and rubber bullets; sometimes with live rounds. The source of the friction was the Jewish settlement of Netzarim to the west, comprising approximately 60 families. For Palestinians, the Jewish settlement - both then and now - is a symbol of their continued occupation and, as they see it, their oppression. By extension, the junction is similarly held in contempt.

For the most part the area around here is pancake-flat. Any Palestinians from Bureij, where the al-Dura family live, or any of the other refugee camps to the south, must negotiate the junction if they have to visit Gaza city. According to the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics, the Gaza Strip has eight refugee camps housing around 400,000 people.

With Mohammed's death it was not exactly clear who fired the fatal shots, though most observers, and later news media, reported that they came from the Israeli position. The boy's family and the wider Palestinian community blamed the Israelis, but many Israelis claimed that Palestinian forces had deliberately shot the boy in order that he become a martyr for their cause.

Initially the Israeli army expressed regret at the boy's death, claiming their army post had been under fire. Major-General Yom-Tov Samia told Israeli radio that, while he was ''sorry for this kid'', he was sure that both father and son were not at the junction by accident. ''They were there like the others throwing stones and throwing Molotovs [petrol bombs].'' Later, in a television interview, Samia suggested that Palestinian protesters or police, not Israelis, had actually killed the boy. ''I have no doubt that the gunfire, as it appears in the television close-up, was not from Israeli soldiers,'' he said.

Since then the army has stubbornly attempted to provide alternative explanations for the boy's death. More recent reports, based on the interviews of an American writer, have cited a number of Israeli researchers who claim the death of Mohammed al-Dura could not have come as a result of Israeli soldiers known to have been involved in the clash. One report claims that the boy might not even be dead.

Buriej is a powder-grey shantytown, and the al-Dura family live in a cinderblock house with a corrugated asbestos roof. When we arrive, all of Bureij seems to be in motion: cars, buses, tractors and donkeys tethered to wooden carts herd locals around. A group of children, as ubiquitous in Bureij as concrete buildings, are siphoning petrol. Everywhere there is hustle and bustle, curiosity and a sense of anticipation. Everyone is pumping their car horns. ''Gazan music,'' laughs Wishah. The Arab street is alive. Men discuss events of the day over coffee, in search of an escape from their long malaise. Young men mill around, desperate for glory, the next poster boys and pin-ups of the occupied territories.

On the walls outside the al-Dura home, and many others along the street, are spray-painted images of Mohammed. Poignant photographs of the father and son have been plastered along roads throughout Gaza and the West Bank. The 12-year-old has been turned into a modern-day icon: Egypt produced a stamp bearing his likeness; Morocco has an al-Dura Park; one of Baghdad's main roads was renamed The Martyr Mohammed al-Dura Street.

Jamal al-Dura ushers us inside. More images and pictures of the boy, smiling and youthful, adorn the walls, alongside pictures of Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein. Beneath a mural of Mohammed is a slogan that translates as: ''What was taken with force can only be returned with force.''

Some of Jamal's other children - Nour, ten, Basma, seven, and Basem, five - are helping their mother, Amal, with the latest addition to the family. Baby Mohammed, born on November 29, 2002, is named after his dead brother. The rest of the children, Iyad, 15, Ahmad, 12, and Adam, 11, are playing outside. Given all the mouths to feed, life for the

al-Duras is proving difficult. The family has one television, no telephone or computer and mostly broken, tattered furniture. Fuel, electricity and water are scarce. There are a few litres' worth of cooking-oil in drums on the floor. The children have very few schoolbooks. Later, Nour will read to me in English from her ripped notebook. The UN estimates that one in three Palestinians lives on roughly $2 a day.

Jamal, a 39-year-old former labourer, can no longer work due to his injuries. He received wounds to both legs, one arm and his midsection, and spent four months in a Jordanian hospital. He gets up, turns away from the female photographer and pulls down his trousers. There is a web of deep scarring around his groin area. There is scarring on his legs and around his right elbow area. His right hand is withered and he is unable to move some fingers because of nerve damage. He limps. He was hit by 12 bullets. ''Ahousak.'' The word means to shoot. During our conversation I hear it repeated angrily, over and over.

Jamal, whose face carries the daily existential burden of loss and violence, tells me that the flowers at Netzarim junction were his. But there were problems. ''The [Israeli] soldiers didn't want me to do it,'' he says in a low voice, ''and they tried to block the road. They didn't want my children to stand there. They asked us to leave quickly or they would block the road.'' Although he has been through the excruciating events of the past ''1,000 times'', he recites them again with patience. Only once does he stop and look away from me, his voice briefly faltering.

Mohammed was watching rioting at the junction on television at home on the Friday night before he died. When he saw it, he asked his mother if he could go along and join the protests. ''I didn't want him to go,'' recalls Amal, 33, after making sweet tea. She has taken a seat on a plastic chair beside her husband. The following morning, Jamal made sure that he was with Mohammed in order to keep him away from the protests. With his friends he had often watched the other boys throw rocks. Amal, wearing a brown head scarf, smiles briefly. His nickname was Mitwali - ''little troublemaker''.

He enjoyed running errands with his father so he obeyed his parents' wishes. Jamal, like many other Gazans, could not go to his job in Israel because the border had closed following rioting in Jerusalem the previous day. He took Mohammed to a used car auction in Gaza city. After finishing they headed home by taxi, but by then some trouble had already begun and their driver refused to cross the junction. Father and son tried to cross on foot.

Amal has found it almost impossible to move on from the events of that day, despite the birth of her latest child. Somewhat curiously, she finds herself drawn to the macabre images of her dying son. ''They are terrible to look at,'' she says, ''but he was my son and I like to see him. I keep hoping he can escape from the bullets and live.'' On one wall I see a picture of the crouching boy beside his father. ''How many soldiers,'' she asks rhetorically, ''have been killed after being hit by a rock?''

Father and son both tried to shield each other behind a concrete barrel. According to the report from Talal Abu-Rama, the Palestinian cameraman working for France 2 who filmed Mohammed's death, the Israeli troops were deliberately targeting the boy and his father. ''They were cleaning the area,'' he reported. ''They were aiming at the boy. They were shooting at him, not only one at a time but many times.''

From the resulting footage there is a distinct circle of bullets on a wall that is largely unblemished. Israeli researchers say that because the bullet holes were circular, as opposed to ''grazes'', they could not have come from Israeli Defence Force positions. They must have come from the position in front of the wall, where the cameraman was filming. Mohammed's death has been reduced to re-enactments, angles, ballistics and geometry.

Whoever was doing the shooting seemed to be aiming at a very specific target. ''The Palestinians were behind the wall,'' says Jamal. ''I was crouching. There was no Palestinian gunfire coming from the direction of the television cameraman. This is crazy to think that a Palestinian would be behind the camera position and then shoot at me, crazy. The bullets were coming from the Israeli positions. I could hear them hitting the ground and wall.'' His voice trails away, unsure of the exact details.

He is not the only one. No one can be 100 per cent sure that the bullets were from the Israeli soldiers in the fortress on the opposite side of the road - and I point out that, according to the Israelis, the troops were under orders not to fire in response to rocks thrown at them. Jamal shrugs. ''They have said this many times before and people and children have been shot. What do orders mean here?'' He pauses. ''Mohammed was saying to me, encouraging me, 'Do not be afraid, father, don't worry.' The first bullet got in his right knee. He told me, 'I was shot father, I was injured.' I told him, 'Don't worry, the ambulance will come and take us.' Due to the intensity of the shooting, no ambulance could reach us. I put my right hand up to beg them to stop shooting. I couldn't protect him more. After a moment I can't hear him speaking. He was shot. I don't know if he's dead, I don't

know if I'm dead.''

We discuss some reports claiming that most of what happened that day might have been a ruse: that the boy and the man in the film might not have been shot and that the boy, if he was shot, might not have actually died. I tell Jamal that there are those who believe the Palestinians, in co-operation with foreign journalists, the cameraman and even the UN, arranged a well-staged production of Mohammed's death. He looks incredulous. ''So where is Mohammed? Have I told his brothers and sisters lies? My son is dead. He died with me. I buried him. The Israeli soldiers killed him. I know where the bullets were coming from. I don't think the Palestinians need to shoot their children to prove they have an enemy.''

The posthumous celebrity surrounding their son is no longer as welcome as it once was. The family are more reticent than before about speaking out, wary now of upsetting neighbours, friends and fellow Palestinians who have also lost family. There were reports that as well as a monthly $200 pension from the Palestinian authorities they also received thousands of dollars from Saddam Hussein, who was known to pay money to the families of suicide bombers. ''We don't like to talk about it,'' says Jamal briskly. ''It's not about money. My son is dead and no money can compensate for that.''

Jamal sees himself as an ambassador of sorts on behalf of his dead son. Before the death, he had only ever left Gaza on one occasion. After it he visited the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, South Africa and Egypt: a sense of mission that has helped turn his son into a modern-day icon.

Amal al-Dura, despite the softness of her eyes, seems the angrier of the two. She still half-expects Mohammed to come through the metal doors leading from the alleyway into their house. She has a kindly face but there is bitterness in her voice not so evident in her husband's. ''I can still see his face all the time,'' she says. ''He was a good boy. Of course, yes, he would go and throw stones at the Israelis. All the children around here do this. We don't want them to but we cannot look after them all the time.

''I spent the day cleaning the house and preparing some food for the children and my husband and son. I watched the television while I waited for them to return. I saw the shooting and then I saw my son.'' She stops, but her voice is strong and unwavering. ''One day they will weep like Palestinian mothers. I think that his death was worth it because of all the attention it brought to the world about the Palestinian people. But I would much rather he was here with his brothers and sisters.''

Jamal, who is due to leave for Egypt to receive medical treatment in the days following our meeting, complains that the Israelis do not allow him to be treated in Jerusalem. ''Every time I go to the borders or checkpoints,'' he says, ''the Israelis interrogate me. They know who I am, and they know what happened to my son and what they did to me, but they make things very difficult all the time.''

Amal brings more sweet tea. She is vociferously against living in a Palestinian state made up of Gaza and the West Bank. She wishes her people to have the whole of Palestine. ''My son did not die so that we can have Israel as our neighbours in Palestinian land. We want peace, but not at any price.'' She looks away.

With every death, on both sides, the voices of moderation recede - yet in their hearts they are pragmatists. More deaths, whether Palestinian or Israeli, will only bring more suffering, more pain to someone else's mother, someone else's father. Mohammed, Amal says, liked to play football in the streets. She picks up the infant Mohammed from the floor. ''The streets are empty without him.''

After we leave, Jabr Wishah takes me for some food down by the rolling beach. ''The most beautiful in the world,'' he says. It is a curious sight. We drive along the coast road, past kilometres of yellow sand. Men are smoking their water-pipes; I see children in the sea with their fathers playing football. Some boys are attempting to take a donkey for a swim; another is flying a yellow kite. The scene is startlingly surreal. No longer is this a lobotomised landscape. Gazans are sunbathing. The women are modestly dressed in jackets and headscarves. Someone is selling sweet potatoes and bread. There is little money to go around but everyone seems tentatively happy. The beach is free. ''We can go for a swim if you like,'' offers Wishah. Not everything in Gaza is as it seems.

''We still dream of him.'' The departing words of Amal ring in my ear as I sit on the restaurant patio with the Mediterranean shimmering in front of me. ''We always dream of him. And we will remember him through his baby brother, little Mohammed.''

July in Gaza, and the sun is punishingly hot. But those who live here say that Gaza is beautiful. Like everything in the prism of the Middle East, there are many sides. Did the Israelis at Netzarim junction kill Mohammed al-Dura? Perhaps no one will never know for sure. But maybe the untimely death of yet another child, whoever caused it, can wake us up to a wider truth. n

Suffer

the little children

According to B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, 663 Palestinian minors - children under the age of 16 - were killed by Israeli security forces in the Occupied Territories between December 1987 and July 2003, the period covered by the two Palestinian intifadas. Of that total, 204 were aged 13 and under.

Over the same period, 27 Israeli minors were killed by Palestinian civilians in the occupied territories. The number of Israeli minors killed by Palestinian civilians in Israel itself was 70. On August 19, five Israeli children were killed in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem.

Samer Samir Sudki Tabanjeh was killed on October 1, 2000 in Nablus on the West Bank by live gunfire from Israeli security forces. He was 12. Wa'al Mahmud 'Imad A-Nashit, also aged 12, from Jabalyah Refugee Camp, was killed on October 22, 2000, struck on the head by a rubber-coated metal bullet fired by Israeli security forces at Erez Checkpoint.

On the Israeli side, Shalhavet Pass was ten months old when she was shot dead in her stroller at the gates of a Jewish settlement in Hebron in March 2001. Yehuda Shoham, pictured above, became the youngest Jewish victim when he died, aged five months, after a rock was thrown at his family's car near a West Bank settlement.

The youngest victim of the intifada was Diya Tmeizi, a three-month- old Palestinian baby, born after his parents underwent a decade of fertility treatment. Jewish extremists opened fire on the car in which he was travelling near Hebron.

Shortly after Michael Tierney's visit, Israel began to dismantle the Netzarim junction post to the west of the settlement as part of the terms of an agreement that saw security control for most of Gaza handed over from Israel to the Palestinians.