The IDF began its "pullout" from Ramallah late Saturday night, as the fog crunched its fingers around the city. My fear, right now, is that the blinding implications of this fog will extend beyond the borders of this city, and people will not see what sits directly in front of their eyes.

Anybody who listens to Israeli spokespeople and pays attention the "facts on the ground" that the IDF establishes, knows that "pullout" only means re-deployment. So on the surface, Sharon (Bush's "man of peace") gives the appearance of meeting some vague "timeline for a pullout," but in reality simply scoots some tanks out of downtown Ramallah and sends them into Qalandia Refugee Camp and a small village called Deir Ammad, and imposes curfew there. This curfew forces all people into their homes, at which point the IDF conducts house-to-house searches for what they call "militants" and "terrorists," which is to say all men.

So the tanks are not on the Ramallah streets today, but there's been no "pullout" and there's only minimal relief here. Yes, people can go outside without fear of being shot, but they know their momentary "freedom" comes at the expense of their neighbors. Besides, some folks aren't exactly itching to walk out into a city that's been bludgeoned beyond recognition.

"It's too hard to go out," Lutfiye Ziadeh explains, "I weep right on the street."

The sidewalks are graveyards for rotting garbage and cars crushed by tanks. There's been almost no garbage pick-up for the past three weeks (the Red Cross, actually, accompanied a few garbage trucks before giving up the operation altogether). Sprinkle a little rain on mounds of decomposing fruits, vegetables and meat, to go along with the water from the shattered mains gushing into the gutters, and you've got yourself a full-fledged health problem. It's so bad that people have been burning their waste right out in the streets to kill some of the odor (which, of course, released more toxins into their air).

It will surely take weeks to get all the garbage collected and properly disposed of, because many roads (especially in the outlying neighborhoods) have been raked by tanks and bulldozers, rendering them barely passable.

And at the intersections of these scarred streets, the IDF has graciously piled up crushed Mercedes Benz taxis, boulders, uprooted olive and fig trees, and whatever else that found itself in the way of IDF bulldozers (supplied by Caterpillar, an Illinois corporation). The "sealing" of these neighborhoods is de facto occupation, and ensures prolonged hardship on the people there, whether or not IDF troops stalk the area.

"They laugh like children playing when they do this," Hurriya Ziadeh, my 11-year-old friend, tells me with bewilderment in her voice. It's difficult for her to understand how anybody could take such delight--the sanctified delight of a child--in the destruction of a people's way of life.

And I've only been talking about the devastation on the streets. The entire civil society and infrastructure has been scorched in the past three weeks, and this is something that gets scant (if any) mention in the coverage of "events" here, let alone any analysis.

Today Lutfiye Ziadeh took three reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle (in ridiculous flak jackets and helmets) into the streets, to introduce them to people and bring them up to speed on the issues facing the people of Ramallah. These self-identified journalists were made aware of the IDF assault on the Ramallah Municipality and all the NGO's in the city. The Municipality is where all the land deeds, among other things, are/were stored, but "they...destroyed all the documents. This is the real damage," Cedar from St. Andrew's Cathedral says. "They're eliminating our identity as a people, to make it easier to remove us."

In addition to this pathological rampage on the institutions that document and preserve Palestinian culture, the IDF has blasted out nearly all the local businesses. Shards of glass glint all over the street, and when you get over the putrid scent of septic garbage, acrid gunpowder soot singes your nose. It's impossible to miss this mess, and unconscionable to ignore it, but "all they [SF Chronicle journalists] do is take pictures of the crowds and cars driving in the streets," because their "angle" is "life after the siege." (And they didn't thank Ms. Ziadeh for picking them up and driving their culture-shocked Bay Area asses around. Nor did they eat the breakfast she prepared for them. Nor did they drink the Arabic coffee she bubbled. But that's another discussion.)

How can anybody talk about "life after the siege" and not focus on the obliteration of infrastructure and necessary civil services? Further, is the "siege" over just because tanks have changed their positions? The people here are in shock, which is to say under mental siege. When I asked Mahmoud Ziadeh, a negotiator for the Federation of Palestinian Trade Unions, what comes next for them he shrugged: "First I have to go talk to people. We have to tell our stories to each other." In short, to rebuild community, before he can even think about reconstruction, or his job.

The fog falls thick and impenetrably white. Can you see it? Can you see through it?