They gather every morning on the southern Israeli hilltop as the pairs of Apache helicopters on attack runs swoop over the Mediterranean coast and air strikes send charcoal clouds curling over the Gaza Strip skyline.
They don't seem to be bothered by the occasional Qassam rockets and mortar rounds that explode in the surrounding fields.
They have come to watch the war.
They come from Sderot, the southern Israeli town hardest hit years of persistent Palestinian rocket attacks that are the casus belli for the Israeli military campaign to destabilize Hamas.
The journalists have come too. Lugging their tripods and long lenses, carrying their cameras and binoculars, this is as close as reporters can get to covering the devastating nine-day-old Israeli military campaign meant to destabilize Hamas.
While the residents of Sderot gather on one hillside, the journalists gather on another one closer to the border.
The war has been underway for nine-days, and Israel still won't let reporters into Gaza to cover the fighting.
So journalists by the dozens are setting up shop on distant hillsides like this one, the one with the billowy pine tree and the children's wood swing hanging from worn rope.
From here you can see the distant smoke from the air strikes and hear Hamas militants fighting Israeli soldiers somewhere over there, maybe near the mosque, or maybe over by the water tower, or maybe somewhere near that apartment building.
A puff of smoke jets into the air near the water tower and there is a high whizzz as a mortar round soars skyward and explodes in the field behind us, not so far from the gas station on the highway.
There is a succession of booms coming beyond the tree-line to the south as Israeli artillery units fire round after round into the Gaza Strip.
Somewhere there on the other side of the closed border, amid the dusty, gray concrete homes of Beit Hanun is Raed, the almost-always-cheerful Gaza taxi driver who was one of the few willing and able to navigate through both Fatah and Hamas checkpoints during the June, 2007 bloody showdown.
Raed knows something about Israeli artillery: Two years ago, a misguided artillery barrage killed 18 members of his family.
The aftermath of the chaotic attack was captured on video by journalist George Azar in the Al Jazeera English documentary, Gaza Fixer.
The last time George got hold of Raed over the weekend, the Israeli air strikes had blown out all the windows of his home, so the family was sleeping -- for warmth and safety -- in the hallways and corridors.
Now that Israeli ground forces are back in his town, right there on the horizon, Raed's phone has gone dead, probably because Gaza has largely gone dark, and the power outages have made it impossible for people to charge their cell phone batteries.
Probably, he is alright. Probably.
More than 500 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli air strike that came in response to the rocket attacks that have killed four Israelis since Israel launched the military operation. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Ambulances can't handle the crush of calls or respond to pleas from injured families living in areas where the Israeli soldiers and tanks are closing in.
After the mortar launchers in Gaza recalibrate, another one explodes in the field beside us, a little closer this time.
Below us, a herd of cattle grazes in the fields being peppered by the mortar rounds.
A cowboy rides up on his horse to herd the cows away from the border and, inexplicably, back into the field hit by the last mortar strike.
(Photos: Top: A mortar round lands in an open field near Sderot. Below, an artillery unit prepares to fire on Gaza)
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