News agency photographs are frequently,
by chance, unacknowledged legislators.
In the first – singly or in family groups,
some on foot, others in donkey carts –
displaced people are travelling north
along the shoreline. To their right, our left,
is a bombed-out multi-storey apartment block.
Beyond, seawards, are what might be tents.
In the far distance are the tall white chimneys
of the coal-fired power station in Ashkelon.
In the second photograph five children
are playing on the beach building sand castles –
two young boys, two young girls, and an older girl.
Behind them, perhaps fifty yards away,
is the Al-Baqa Internet Café.
The third is taken from the Israeli side
of the border fence – two rows of razor wire.
Beyond them are hectares of building rubble.
In the foreground of the fourth, two young men
are carrying humanitarian aid –
one in a wheelbarrow, the other
in his arms – from a UN centre
in Bureij refugee camp, which was
established in 1949.
Since the photographs were taken – not quite
two months ago – a 500 lb bomb
has been dropped on the cybercafé,
and ninety two children have been starved to death.
By David Selzer