My overflowing e-mail box had two heartwrenching messages this morning about the bloody and brutal events unfolding in the refugee camp in Rafah, the scene of an Israeli invasion aimed at widening the border road that runs along the Gaza Strip and Egypt border.

The first was from Mohammed Al Moghayer who borrowed a laptop from a Spanish journalist that had a few precious minutes remaining to send an appeal to a friend. The forwarded message had this subject line: "1948 Again - Just read and hear the cries of desperation," a reference to the hundreds of cases when Palestinians were then forced out of their homes by the Jewish terrorist groups. Mohammed's message read, in part:

"They [the Israelis] are shelling us, more from the Apaches and F-16s. Many injured and killed people. The ambulances can't reach the area. I will deliver that computer [back] to the journalist, cose [because] it's ringing lack of batteries. Please, please and for the sake of those children, tell the people about what is going on. Tell them about the parts of the bodies here … Well, more rockets now, I must leave now to the entrance of the hospital to report [on] things here."

Earlier, in the short message, he mentioned he was not able to identify the body of his relative who was killed in the Israeli attack. "They brought him to the hospital as parts and fragments. I can't believe how Hani [his relative] arrived like this, can't, can't, can't really. Why they shell him with a group of children. Why, I don't know why. God, why is this!! Hundreds of houses are demolish[ed] now."

The second message was a report by Ghada Ageel, who lives in Zahra in the Gaza Strip. Her story, which appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on May 16, was delivered in three parts on account of the inconsistent electricity in Gaza. This time, her mother was able to make it home to Khan Younis last Saturday. Her lengthy diary was titled, "Gaza: Horror Beyond Belief".

She began,: "Since Tuesday, May 11, thousands of people have been denied the simple right to return to their homes; this includes infants, children, students, employees, women and men of all ages. There is no law in this life or world that should prevent someone from returning to his or her home. Yet in Palestine this is happening. And it is Israel, the storied democratic state, that is practicing this grave violation of very basic human rights.

"Tens of thousands of students and employees came from the south of the strip to Gaza City for university studies, work, and for other various needs. They got stuck in Gaza after Israel closed all the internal checkpoints in the Strip dividing it into three separate parts."

Ghada's mother was one of those people who was eager to return home to see her three younger children left alone in Khan Younis. At one point all had to circumnavigate the main road, where the Israeli tanks stood, and run across a one-kilometre trek on the beach. At the next checkpoint, they sat for six hours in blazing sun in the hope that the gates of the checkpoint would open. She wrote:

"Suddenly, the soldiers started to shoot using live bullets and tear gas grenades. The tanks and the jeeps started to drive towards us. I took Mom from the taxi where she had been sitting for eight hours and we started to run. Every single one of us tried to escape. I was holding my young son, Tarek, with one hand and helping my mother with the other while Ghaida, my young daughter, was screaming somewhere close by.

"My mother – my mother! – fell to the ground and people carried her. I carried Tarek and ran from the gas. I shouted and called to Ghaida. She was shouting for me somewhere nearby, but out of sight. As a mother, these moments were the worst" Since the outbreak of the Palestinian-Israeli fighting in 2000, the Associated Press reported, Israel has demolished or damaged nearly 2,000 houses in Rafah, leaving more than 12,600 people homeless. About 90,000 Palestinians live in the Rafah refugee camp where Israel wants to expand its control of the border area.. Yet, on the other side of the great divide, Secretary of State Colin Powell who was attending the World Economic Forum in Jordan. In his first meeting in many months with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei, Secretary Powell cajoled him to grab this "opportunity" proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for an Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip.

In other words, the Palestinians should not doubt Sharon's good intentions although the Israeli prime minister did not bother to negotiate this proposal with anyone. Of course, he did win the endorsement of President George W. Bush but - much to the surprise of all - not his own Likud party.

Even Secretary Powell was equally trusting. He told Al Arabiya television last week: "I've always found it completely, completely un-understandable, difficult to understand for me, why the Palestinians don't take this opportunity to end terror and challenge Israel to perform according to the 'road map' and to press the United States to do it."

Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, hit the nail on the head when his comment about what Powell had to tell Qorei: "There was music but no lyrics."

It is time for the Bush administration to sing a different tune and not to think that a pro-forma denunciation of Israeli house demolitions in Rafah will suffice. He should not be surprised that the Arab reaction has been cool.