On Nahal Oz, on Israel's Western border, there is no night.
    When the sun comes down on the lonely plain the young farmers turn on spotlights because the Arab is only 400 yards away and he travels best in the dark. If you don't stand watch he may come and mine your fields, or cut your water lines, or perhaps just carry off your wheat and barley at harvest time.
    It sounds like courting sure death to bathe an outpost like Nahal Oz in daylight when it is sitting under enemy guns, but Egypt's artillery has the settlement square in its sights at all times anyway. You don't need neons to throw mortar.       

    The Bible tells us Gaza is the place where the brave giant Samson stood alone against the Philistines. Today the wasteland outside the ancient city is stained with blood again as the modern Hebrew tribes do battle there against the Egyptians.
    The Gaza Strip is a lonely hunk of barren land on the Mediterranean shoreline, 5 miles wide, 20 long. On one side there are 50,000 Arab refugees from Palestine and on the other there is a network of Israeli farm settlements--called "Kibbutzim."
    Behind both outer lines, behind the refugees and the farmers, who also happen to be splendid fighting men, there are soldiers--many soldiers, perhaps even armies.                *       *       *     Nahal Oz, on the Gaza Strip is closer to Egypt than any other kibbutz. There are 12 married couples among the 76 boys and girls there. I looked up Eytan and Ilana Alumi, who are both 21, because their one-room house took a direct hit last Aug. 22 when the gunners across the way opened up on them.
    Eytan was working in the fields when it started. Dana, pregnant, had gone to Tel Aviv to the doctor an hour before a 120mm shell tore into their white-washed brick cabin.
    I found Ilana in the mess hall, her long black locks in disarray and a Polka-dot apron covering her blue skirt as she set the bare wooden tables for lunch, and asked her how she happened to come back to Nahal Oz with her time so near.
    "There never was any question about it," the girl said, her brown eyes flashing as if I never should have asked, "I wouldn't have thought except to come back here. This is my home. My baby will grow up here."   *       *       *     The shells fell on Nahal Oz for five hours that steaming hot August morning but all the kids lost was some chickens. Everyone went to their station or into the dugouts, whatever the battle plan called for, and they lay under fire until the all clear sounded and they found they had no casualties but the chickens and went back to their jobs.
    And the Israeli artillerymen, having returned the fire, as they invariably do, put the wraps back on their big guns and called it a day.   *       *       *     Daphna Snir, who is 21, had just put her month-old son Michal--the only baby on Nahal Oz--in his playpen outside the room when the bombardment started. Her husband, Rami, also 21, was working on a construction job on the settlement.
    "I picked up Michal and went to the shelter," the young mother said, "and we stayed there until it was over. I tried not to be scared but I was afraid for the baby."
    One shell, an 81mm piece, ripped into the dirt incline outside the concrete shelter. Daphna knew it, of course--she heard a thud. I asked her whether bringing up baby (there's a second on the way) wasn't a perilous thing on Nahal Oz.
    "No," she said. "I don't worry about it. The men can take care of us."                      *       *       *     The men. The girls too. They're all from the Army of Israel. Some of them are still in it. They took basic training, boys and girls alike, and then elected to do double duty--till the land and man an outpost, two strong necessities in Israel--by way of finishing their hitches.
    It was an option they could take or leave.   *       *       *     Gideon Wegman, just married, was in the garage getting his tractor fixed when the Egyptian guns opened up from the old British fort on the hill across the strip.
    Gideon knew what he was supposed to do but he headed for the house first. He wanted to make sure his bride, Sarah, was all right.
    "I was cleaning the room," Sarah said, remembering the day as a kind of adventure, "when I heard that terrible whining sound. I knew what to do. I told my husband he shouldn't have come to the house."   *       *       *     Sarah Wegman, the lively one, just out of her teens and wearing khaki shirts and a loose-fitting blouse, got the Sten gun from behind the dresser. She held it across her midriff with her left hand halfway toward the muzzle and slapped the clip into place with her free hand. Then she held it firmly against her thin waist and said it felt very comfortable and easy to handle.
    The girl liked the Sten gun better than the Czech rifle they had in the room. You've got to hold the clumsy old rifle's heavy wooden stock against your shoulder and that's easier for a man. Gideon would use the rifle; he's big and strong.                     *       *       *     Ephraim Juchtman learned stone masonry in school before he was drafted. He became a volunteer when the settlement was put up as a rampart against the Arabs. He's out of the Army now and free to leave Nahal Oz (as he came, empty-handed, the way it is in most of Israel's kibbutzim).
    He can go back to Tel Aviv as a construction worker and earn $40 a week--very high pay in Israel. If he stays in Nahal Oz, he earns himself nothing but a communal share in the kibbutz and the privilege of being in the first line of defense if the big show starts on the Gaza Strip.
    I asked him why he didn't go back to Tel Aviv and get some of that good folding money.
    "If we don't stay," said the husky, handsome youth, "who will? We belong here."                   *       *       *         Most of them are sabras--born in Israel. They took their name from the cactus plant that abounds in the Holy Land because it is "rough on the outside and sweet on the inside."
    They've been in youth movements almost from the cradle--always together, learning and playing and singing together. It is very natural for them to go from the youth movement to the Army to communal life of the kibbutz.
    It is very natural for them to put their lives on the line too. They were in their teens when the Arabs tried to grind Israel into the dirt in 1948 and they have always known that it might be their lot to fight for their country when they came of age.                  *       *       *     Elezev Sheitowitz, 21, runs a tractor. He came from a town outside of Haifa. He studied mechanics--another high paying trade--in school. He's finishing his Army duty on Nahal Oz but he's going to stay on.
    "We feel it is our duty to the country to help in the farming," he said, "I don't mind the danger. This is the way we've been trained--to do what we have to do for Israel. I never had any thought to leave. I feel I am needed here."
    There was a rifle on the tractor beside him--he had come in from the fields for a noontime meal of tomatoes, sour cream, potatoes, corn and soup--and an ammo belt around his waist. That's standard gear for some of the farmers on the Gaza Strip today.
    It happened to one of the tractor drivers right after they built the watch tower and the other necessary installations and put down the first few cabins and called their 2,500 acres Nahal Oz and made things grow on it.
    The boy, 19, was plowing the land where it ran along the Egyptian border and he waved to some Arab soldiers--there hadn't been much trouble on the strip then. Suddenly gunfire split the good summer air and the boy fell dead in a furrow. A companion, also hit, managed to get back to the kibbutz.
    A patrol went out for the body but it wasn't there. The next day it was there--mutilated.
    That was two years ago but it is a very bitter memory on Nahal Oz. Nobody ever forgot it.
    I think that's one of the reasons, but just one, why a man from New York gets such funny looks when he asks those kids whatever possesses them to stick out their necks on the Gaza Strip.        
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    IN MONDAY'S POST: What Israel is up against.