While other reporters awaited permission to follow Israeli troops into the battle area in Lebanon, Richard Ben Cramer flew through Athens to Beirut, then rode by taxi to the front, and finally walked across no-man's land to meet the Israelis. His daring made his editors uneasy, but enabled him to produce this remarkable account.

RASEL BAYADA, Occupied Lebanon – It is eerily still in no-man's land, a two-mile testament to the lesson that people are as much a part of the landscape as houses and fences and fields.

Here, eight miles from Lebanon's southern border, between the last Fatah commando checkpoint and the spearhead of the advancing Israelis, the chickens come out to meet you on the road. It has been 48 hours since grain was scattered for them in their yards.

Here, everything is frozen in time, like a Pompeii without the lava. Crates of oranges are stacked, unattended, next to empty houses. Telephone wires dangle broken and useless from their poles. An open spigot pours an endless stream of water onto a swamp that once was a garden.

Here, the mere whoosh of a breeze through the leaves can make you sprint for cover, scanning the sky for warplanes until you dive into the orange groves ... only to emerge a moment later feeling foolish and shaky from the rush of adrenalin.

To be sure, there is noise and plenty of it. There are real planes and anti-aircraft guns nearby. Artillery blasts thudding on the hillsides make the sheep bleat as they scatter and the frogs wail in the ditches.

But it takes man's noise to break the stillness – a child's cry, an engine or a laugh. And without man, the eeriness is unrelieved in this world between two worlds.

Behind the last Fatah checkpoint, the teenagers bearing Kalashnikov submachine guns and wearing jaunty red berets talk quietly among themselves for long, nervous hours.

The fear of the Israelis is palpable. The sky is constantly watched. For 48 hours, on the streets and in the fields, the little bands have shifted.

They move constantly – occasionally fighting, more often just moving, farther and farther back.

The latest news is passed by word of mouth, from the children who seem to be everywhere, or from Passing Jeeps or cabs full of commandos.

Transport is arranged on an ad-hoc basis. A Peugeot with no muffler stops. A Lebanese is driving. A Palestinian sits by his side. The back seat is stacked with 16 captured Israeli machine guns.

This is Fatahland, as the Israelis call it, where everyone might be a commando and children of 10 know how to handle the Kalashnikov.

Fatahland has been shoved north from the border, helter-skelter, so that now it is near the ancient Mediterranean port of Tyre. Still, the welter of movement and talk is quite organized.

There are few radios and no walkie-talkies. But the movements of an outsider – every step he takes – are watched and reported.

For two days, in the face of Israel's massive assault, the Palestinian forces have had to shoot and run away.

"There is no way for us to face such heavy weapons," said a commando officer in Tyre. "It would be useless. It would be foolish."

Still, on the village streets and in the camps along the coast, the spirit among the commandos is broodingly vengeful.

"With every step, they will pay," the officer said. "They will pay a price such as Israel never has had to pay."

The Fatah command posts have been moved and re-moved to avoid the threat of Israeli artillery and bombs. Yesterday's location was unknown to 12 of 13 commandos near the front. Yet, somehow, the orders get through. The communications network is the whole population.