The Gaza pullout through the eyes of 12-year-olds

Daniel stopped going to school two weeks ago, after a classmate struck him, threw water bags at him, and taunted him for being a "leftist." Daniel says the classmate also struck his brother Joseph, 11. "I can't go back, because the school hasn't taken care of the problem," Daniel says.

Asked if he understood what a "leftist" is, Daniel replied: "A rightist is someone who does not want to be evacuated, while a leftist wants to be evacuated. Because I have a different opinion, they call me a leftist. I don't think it is bad to be a leftist." He says Joseph still goes to school, but carries stones in his bag to use against possible attack.

Most of the class, including Nati, went to Daniel's house and asked him to come back to school, but to no avail. "It's not OK to hit him," says Nati. "I can disagree with his father's opinion, but that doesn't mean he should be struck."

Instead of going to school, Daniel has been helping his father at his appliance store, but that is proving to be no place of refuge since it is being boycotted by many of the settlers. On Sunday, when they opened the shop, they found the windows smeared with egg yolks and plastered with stickers saying, "Uprooting the settlements is a victory for terrorism."

When Daniel minded the store last week, he heard a neighboring storekeeper reprimand the customer outside. "Why are you buying from there? It is forbidden," Daniel recalls him saying.

"Business is down to about zero," says Mr. Rotenstein. "My telephone has been cut for outgoing calls, I can't pay the mortgage or even the electricity. But I will not close until the evacuation. I won't give these people the feeling they defeated me."

Nati, meanwhile, hopes the day of evacuation will never come. "Maybe the government thinks we will be tempted by the money, but money is not everything in life," says the precocious youngster.

Asked why he loves Neve Dekalim so much, he says: "It's not like a city, you don't have to take a taxi to see your friends. When I walk around, I know everyone. We have restaurants, a supermarket, a bank, everything you need. We have great youth clubs where we play basketball and fly planes by remote control."

Nati says the mortar attacks do not trouble him much because "if God wants me to die, I will die. Most of the mortars fall in the sands." He adds that he thinks God watches over the settlements since the mortars have resulted in only a few fatalities during several years of persistent firing. "Of course it is a miracle. It is from God because we are here to guard the homeland, to guard our land."

Daniel takes a different view of the mortars. He says five Palestinian mortars have fallen near his house, including one recently in his neighbor's yard. "I'm afraid a mortar will fall on our house. When I told this to my parents, they told me that they are also afraid," he says.

Meir Rotenstein says: "There is nothing I can do about the mortars. I have a 4-year-old who knows the word mortar and what it can do."

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