OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Independent: The Homecoming
"I cried in blood," Fawzi al-Kafarneh told me as we walked through the ruins of his brick factory in Gaza, "all my savings of 20 years are blown away."

Unshaven and disheveled, the 58-year-old Palestinian man talked ceaselessly to himself in a low voice yesterday, sweating profusely under his flowing, tan-coloured shirt.

The Israeli army wrecking crews left his factory in smithereens as they left, much like the orange groves, homes and other factories that used to line the main road into Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. Finally, after months under curfew - which kept workers from their jobs, farmers from their fields and children from schools - the relief is palpable.