Any moment, Najah Awad said, Israeli tanks were sure to chew their way across the border and past her house here. She had already bundled her four children off to their grandparents' home. She was packing up whatever she needed for the certain trouble ahead.

But was she angry at the prospect of another round of violence in Gaza?

She certainly was not angry at Hamas, one of the militant groups that on Sunday jointly attacked an Israeli military post not far away, killing two soldiers, wounding three and taking one prisoner, almost guaranteeing a severe Israeli counterstrike.

"It's good and even sweet," Ms. Awad, 28, said of the attack, as two Israeli drones buzzed overhead. "I wish they would always do this."

The sentiment was common in Gaza on Monday: applause for the attack — which Palestinians said avenged an unacceptable number of civilians killed by recent Israeli strikes here — and deadened resignation over the pain likely to come.

And so the waiting, marked by Palestinians craning their heads to the sky in search of Israeli warplanes, opened a particularly clear window onto the struggle here, of long grievances fed by the heedless logic of attack and counterattack.

To many Israelis, Gaza should be quiet now: Israel withdrew the last of its troops and settlers from this poor strip of coast last September and scaled down targeted assassinations even as Hamas, responsible for some of the worst suicide bombings against Israelis, took over the Palestinian government.

Yet, in recent months, hundreds of homemade Qassam rockets have been fired from Gaza at civilians into pre-1967 Israel. So many Israelis see their own attacks — aimed at militants firing Qassams — as justified, even if they happen to hit civilians.

For Palestinians, the issues are different: Leaving Gaza did not mean an end to the struggle, given that the West Bank remains occupied by Israeli troops and Palestinians remain without a state that they deem just. "This is one geographic and one political unit," Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led government, said in an interview on Monday, defending the Hamas attacks. Israel, he added, "should deal with it as one unit."

In addition, Palestinians say that Gaza is still under siege, with its borders often blocked off and its skies and waters still patrolled by the Israeli military.

But more immediately, Israeli military attacks against militants firing Qassams and other rockets have killed more than a dozen civilians in recent weeks, not including the eight people killed on a beach in Gaza on June 9. Israel has denied that its shelling that day caused that explosion, but Palestinians here cited it in one interview after another as the prime reason that Hamas was obliged to strike back.

"I guess you watched TV?" said Ahmad Attiaya, 50, referring to a video beamed around the world of a 10-year-old Palestinian girl wailing on the sand amid the bodies of seven family members. "That was a huge Israeli escalation. It made us very angry. And it gave the Palestinians a military justification."

Ali Issa, 43, a farmer who had gathered in the shade of a few trees with Mr. Attiaya in a border area of Gaza, said: "I am happy and I am unhappy. I am unhappy because the Israeli reaction will be tough. But I am happy because of the retaliation for the blood of our people."

As ever, politics also play a role: Since Hamas took over the Palestinian Authority government here in January, Palestinians in Gaza have been caught in an ever-worsening financial squeeze, caused largely by the virtual shut-off of Western aid in protest of the refusal of Hamas to forswear violence or renounce its dedication to Israel's destruction.

Hamas had largely ended its attacks against Israelis amid a unilateral cease-fire it declared last year. But, political analysts and people in the streets here say, the combination of the civilian deaths and the worsening of Palestinians' lives since Hamas took power increased pressure for it to do something — a point Mr. Hamad, the government spokesman, seemed to acknowledge.

"It is not easy to tell people: 'You have to patient and polite,' " he said. "You have to expect a kind of reaction sometimes."

The consequences, apparently, are beside the point.

"We are used to their reactions," said Baha Mehedin, 56, an English teacher who was visiting a friend at the Abu Yousef Al-Najjar hospital here in Rafah, which is bracing for casualties in the coming days. "They have done everything. From the sea, borders closed — it's all up to them. They want to insult us."

He said he saw a measure of restraint in the Hamas attack, which, unlike suicide bombings, was carried out against soldiers.

"This time Hamas did something against soldiers, not to citizens and civilians," he said. "So I think everyone supports this."

Farther north in Gaza City, the crowded capital, a watermelon salesman, Mohammad Abu Arab, 37, said he too supported the attack — and fully expected strong Israeli strikes.

"We used to be afraid," he said. "Now we are not anymore."

He showed his own toughening scars: on his right forearm and head, where four pieces of shrapnel hit him in 2003, when he was a bystander as Israeli missiles first targeted Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a top Hamas leader who was killed in a second Israeli strike the following year.

Since Hamas took power and aid money plunged, he said, his business has plummeted. Even amid fears of fighting that may make shopping difficult in the coming days, he saw no signs that Gazans were stocking up on groceries or supplies.

"Who has the money to buy?" he asked. "People buy, maximum, for one or two days. To buy and store things for a month — forget it."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company