I finally got the go-ahead from the Globe's driver Ashraf in Gaza – he of the seven children and hearty handshake – that ground military operations in part of the Strip seemed to have slowed, and so off I headed this week.

I didn't know quite what to expect, though I'd heard the devastation was great and the people more desperate than ever after nearly seven weeks of what Israel calls "Operation Summer Rains." I walked through the long, cavernous concrete tunnel at the Erez crossing into Gaza with my heart beating fast, wondering what I'd encounter on the other side, wondering if maybe I should have pulled that heavy flak jacket out of the back of the car after all. But as the little Globe team of three careened through Gaza's broken streets in Ashraf's trusty, aging Mercedes – press sign in the front, TV etched in masking tape on the back and missing its hood ornament after some kids in a refugee camp ripped it off – the skies stayed silent and the damage emerged.

What I found there shook me deeply. And it wasn't just the newly leveled buildings, the tank and bulldozer tracks and twisted bits of metal and torn cloth that remain of the greenhouses that were in their way, the extra donkey carts on the road because there's little fuel and less money to buy it, the sewer system on the brink of overflowing, the constant power outages, the teens in hospital wondering if they'll ever walk again. Nor was it just the fact that in a stretch of land with a population of 1.4 million, 1.04 million of them are living on UN handouts.

What is most frightening is the people themselves. Always before in Gaza, I've found people frustrated, but trusting that someday things have to get better -- "insh'allah" – God willing. But that belief is gone now. They're angry and desperate. They know that the return of young Gilad Shalit could stop the violence -- the Israelis have made that clear. Their children are dying. Their homes are being destroyed. Their cupboards are empty.

But they've already sunk so low that they have nothing left to lose. And they don't trust the West anymore, so they don't think Hamas should bend. So they're united almost to a person in saying that they should keep this 19-year-old until they get Palestinian women and children released from Israeli prisons. I talked to fathers and mothers, teenagers and old men, and they all said the same thing: They need to hold out to retain some shred of dignity.

And these aren't the hardline militants: They're regular people who go to the mosque on Friday, much as people in my hometown would go to church on Sunday; they try to put food on the table, improve their homes and raise their kids to be happy and productive adults. But they have completely run out of hope. 

Like in Lebanon, where even ordinary average guys are now cheering on Hezbollah, in Gaza even those who once condemned the actions of militants are coming around. People need hope. And if there's no hope to be found in working and providing your family with a better life, because there is no work and no better life in sight and your kids scream at small noises and wet the bed at night, then people will turn to the only places they can find it. And in Gaza, right now the only hope they find is in the mosques, where the imams are preaching resistance, and in violence, no matter how futile it might be.

So the cycle continues. I no longer wonder if there will be peace here in my lifetime. I wonder if the same stories will be written generations from now instead.