Malake Kafishe was seven months pregnant and happily looking forward to the birth of her second child.
Then, last Thursday night, as on so many nights in Hebron's old city lanes - among the fiercest battle grounds in the West Bank - she heard gunfire.
She froze. "There was shooting, and then I heard the helicopter gunships coming in and my heart just stopped."
She began to bleed and ran for the stairs, stumbling over the last few steps and collapsing in a heap on the doorstep.
Her family rang for an ambulance. Because of the shooting and a curfew imposed on 40,000 Palestinians in Hebron's old city, it took an hour to arrive. Two soldiers insisted on examining Ms Kafishe.
There were four more checkpoints before the ambulance arrived at Alia hospital.
At each roadblock, soldiers swung open the vehicle doors and peered at the ashen-faced woman inside.
By the time she reached the hospital, a journey that normally takes five minutes, 90 minutes had elapsed. The baby was dead.
"The doctor told me: `If you had got here 20 minutes earlier you could have saved the baby'," she said.
The Kafishes are among the hidden casualties of nearly four weeks of killing.
On October 6th, in an effort to choke off protests by Palestinians armed with catapults as well as guns, the Israeli army sealed off the West Bank and Gaza, consigning nearly three million Palestinians to an open-air prison.
In the old city of Hebron, a particularly volatile flashpoint because of the presence of about 200 Jewish settlers in a fortress-like compound, the restrictions are even harsher.
Since October 1st Palestinian residents have been under 24-hour curfew and barred from leaving their homes.
The Jewish settlers are free to leave at any time.
Aside from the Israeli soldiers hunkered down in watch-towers above the Abraham Avinu settlement, or training their guns on the deserted alleys from their sandbagged enclosures on the rooftops of Palestinian houses, the old city of Hebron was like a ghost town yesterday morning.
Shops were shuttered and curtains drawn.
There was no sign of life until 1 p.m., when an Israeli jeep equipped with a megaphone rumbled through a market that in normal times is thronged with people, and announced a four-hour reprieve.
It was only the fifth break in the curfew in 23 days.
Children cooped up for days tumbled into the streets, women in headscarves and long cloaks scurried out to search for food and men congregated at doorways, smoking cigarettes.
The ceasefire proclaimed at last week's emergency summit in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm alSheikh compelled Israel to gradually lift the closure on the West Bank and Gaza.
Now, with the ceasefire in tatters, Israel is tightening its grip on Palestinian territories, severing roads to towns and villages with concrete barricades and sand-bags.
Nablus, Bethlehem, Jenin and Ramallah are virtually sealed off.
In Gaza, which is ringed by an electrified fence, the closure is total. Yesterday Israel again shut down the strip's airport, severing the territory's last exit to the outside world.
Such measures are among the most hated of the occupation, a reminder that despite seven years of self-rule in Gaza and some parts of the West Bank, Israeli troops remain the real masters of Palestinian life.
Some 110,000 Palestinians who work in Israel are idle. Thousands more who work in the West Bank simply cannot reach their jobs.
The present closure is the most severe since 1996, according to Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist who covers Palestinian affairs for the Ha'aretz newspaper and is author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza.
"It is an inner closure now which is even worse. It disconnects all parts of the West Bank from each other.
"Officials in ministries cannot reach their work, teachers cannot reach schools. You can get to places, but it takes twice as long. In effect, the roads belong only to Jews," Ms Hass said.
Under the wary gaze of an Israeli sentry on the neighbouring rooftop, Nasiha Abu Dahoud is scrubbing her courtyard. Yesterday she collected two carrier bags of spent ammunition, including a three-metre belt of machinegun bullets.
Of all the shut-in families of Hebron's old city, hers carries the indignity of being among the poorest. At the best of times her husband, Naif Mohammed, works just one day a week as a labourer, taking home 100 shekels ($26) a time.
With her husband out of work for the duration of the curfew, they are penniless. Most days she feeds her family of six just one meal, a bowl of thick soup doled out by a local charity. "It has been 23 days, and I still cannot understand why," she said.
"Sure, there are kids throwing stones, but is that a reason to put 40,000 people in prison? Why can't they just catch those kids and let the rest of us live in peace?"