Victory is supposed to be sweet. So one might have expected an air of triumph among the Palestinians as they returned to the patch of land in Gaza that Israel's army had reoccupied, only to be pulled out by Ariel Sharon less than a day later.

But there was nothing remotely sweet yesterday, except for the smell of fresh oranges crushed beneath the tracks of tanks and bulldozers which had crashed into the area the day before, mowing down hundreds of citrus trees.

The fruity aroma hung strangely in the air as Palestinians arrived from the nearby town of Beit Hanoun to inspect the damage that they, and we, had been unable to see the day before without running the risk of being shot by the Israeli forces who briefly held the territory.

What they found was a sight all too familiar to the 1.2 million Arabs of Gaza a muddy wasteland about a mile long and 100 yards wide gouged out of the landscape. It was covered in shredded tree trunks, scattered with oranges, and punctuated by the detritus of at least eight flattened buildings, including a border police complex.

Dazed-looking people sifted through the concrete heaps that used to be their homes, some of which had been pounded into pieces no bigger than a fist, searching for anything that could be salvaged. A couple of men showed me two wrecked water wells, and said there were several more which means the surrounding orange orchards will probably also die. "Just look, and write," said one young man, as his wife fished out clothes from the rubble.

If part of the Israeli army's intention was to clear the area to stop Palestinians from using this corner of north-east Gaza to launch mortar attacks on Israeli settlements or towns over the border an attack on Sderot was cited as the provocation for the raid then it did a poor job. Most of the orchard-covered land around remained intact, providing cover for more guerrilla assaults. Palestinian militants demonstrated as much shortly after the Israelis withdrew, by firing at least six more mortars from the same area at the Israeli-controlled Erez industrial zone in northern Gaza and at the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim.

But the operation had far more to do with collective punishment, the same clumsy instrument that Israel has repeatedly used to try to force Yasser Arafat to quell Palestinian attacks during the last seven months. Gaza has been under almost permanent economic siege; a third of the population lives on less than $2 a day; thousands of acres and scores of Arab homes have been knocked down. So far all of this misery has been inflicted to no avail.

The word "reoccupation" does not adequately describe Israel's short-lived land-snatch, as all of the fenced-in 28-mile long Gaza Strip has remained under de facto Israeli occupation, even after 1994 when more than two-thirds of it was placed under Palestinian administration. Throughout, Israel retained a stranglehold on its borders, economy, energy supplies, and water.

This week's incursion was another harsh reminder of the continuing Israeli occupation, and the need to end it the primary purpose of the Palestinian uprising. "It is totally counter-productive," said Jihad al-Wazzir, son of Abu Jihad, a leading PLO official assassinated by Israel 13 years ago. "The more Israel hits us, the more entrenched positions become."

In the end, it was also counter-productive for Mr Sharon within Israel itself. The Prime Minister's hasty order to withdraw left many Israelis with the impression that he buckled under pressure from the United States, and was pulling out his tanks after a tongue-lashing from the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell.

No matter that one senior cabinet minister, Silvan Shalom, insisted yesterday that the decision to withdraw had been taken at 11am on Tuesday, before Washington publicly reacted, or that Mr Sharon's office said the operation was always intended to end on the same day. To many, it looked weak and indecisive. This was not what they had hoped for from the ex-general sold to them at the ballot box as "Mr Security".

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