GAZA (UPI) - Israeli soldiers fire gunshots in the air. In response, Palestinian vehicles gathered from Gaza Strip southern area turn their engines on and slowly move forward towards an Israeli checkpoint erected near the Jewish settlement of Nitzarim to head to Gaza City.

The jammed traffic starts crossing through the Israeli military barrier while Palestinians watch two tanks parked near the checkpoint, and several Israeli soldiers watch the vehicles and the passengers.

The cars do not have much time to get through. Israeli soldiers open the main road that connects the Gaza Strip's southern areas with its north for two hours in the morning, then close it, then reopen it for another two hours in the end of the day, and close it all night.

At the checkpoints, Israeli soldiers do not use their hands to conduct traffic. Their gunshots order hundreds of Palestinian cars to stop or start.

As the day draws to a close, the situation worsens. The nights are scary, tough and more violent, when Israeli soldiers are on extreme alert and shoot heavy calibers from automatic machineguns erected on their tanks at any suspected body.

When a few armed Palestinians shoot several bullets from their M-16 rifles at the Israeli soldiers, and run away, panicked soldiers immediately turn their machine guns on anything they do -- and do not see.

The Israeli army has divided the 36-square-kilometer Gaza Strip that has 1.3 million people into four separate areas by putting tanks, hills of sands and checkpoints between each zone.

The measures were taken following daily and nightly Palestinian shooting at Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in most of the Gaza Strip areas, especially around the Jewish settlement.

Israel has justified imposing such measures on the Palestinian people as a means to force them to put an end to "violence" and military action carried out against the soldiers and the Jewish settlers.

But Palestinians see the actions as incitement. The chief of the preventive security in the Gaza Strip, Col. Mohamed Dahlan, said in an interview that Israel can only get the situation back to the way it was before the eruption of the confrontations on Sept. 28 by ending these security measures.

He sees foolishness in Israeli soldiers sitting into a huge Merkavah tank with their fingers on the triggers of automatic machineguns ready to open fire at any Palestinian vehicle or individual that may act foolishly.

Hundreds of Palestinian residents have moved into the Gaza Strip enclave because of the Israeli sieges imposed on the four isolated parts. The measures prevent residents from going to work, schools and universities, and hospitals and economically punish those who need to export vegetables and fruit.

Nidal Abu Skander, a taxi driver, looked angry and frustrated while waiting in a long queue of cars standing before the crossing at the Nitzarim checkpoint to Gaza City.

"We need a catalogue to show us the kinds of gunshots the soldiers are firing and the kinds of its sounds, and which sound means move ahead and which one means to stop," said Abu Skander.

Not every driver can cross the checkpoint within the two hours. Only those who leave their houses very early and wait close to the barrier can usually make it. Those who reach the area late, may cross and may not.

If drivers fail to cross the barrier on time, they are not allowed to cross. They must head from home and try again in the early evening.

At the checkpoint, one of the cars' passengers was Najeya Abu Draz, a 58 year-old woman from the southern town of Deir El Balah, who was going to visit her sick daughter admitted to one of Gaza City's main hospitals.

She stopped whispering verses for safety from the Quran, and said "It is a humiliating trip," and then added that she has no choice but to pass by the Israeli military barrier to go and see her daughter at the hospital.

Most of Gaza Strip southern area residents who have urgent business to be done and have relatives or friends live in Gaza City, decide to stay overnight in Gaza to have enough time to finalize their business.

During the first two days of the siege, when the Israeli soldiers were not allowing the residents to move, a few residents who had to go to Gaza City used boats and sailed from the beach of Deir El Balah to the beach of Gaza City.

"It is really ridiculous that our roads and streets are closed, and we use the ocean to move," said Nader Mesleh, who works in a café in Gaza. He said that it is risky either to use the ocean or use bypassing roads.

Many stories can be heard from hundreds of people standing or sitting on the ground or in their cars, waiting for the soldiers to open the barrier, while fear and anxiety can be seen into their eyes.

One story circulating was about a father of a one-week-old baby who had died in the hospital. He was waiting for the soldiers to open the barrier. The father went to beg the soldiers to let him pass.

The soldiers refused to listen to him, and when he kept begging them to let him cross to bury his baby in one of the refugee camps, the soldiers refused and pointed their guns at him.

Before these measures were taken, the distance between Rafah town south and Bet Hanon village north in the Gaza Strip could take 35 minutes by taxi. Today, under the Israeli siege imposed on the Gaza Strip until a further notice, a trip from south to north can take days.

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