2003-12-07 04:00:00 PDT Abu Hishma, Iraq -- As the war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, U.S. soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire.

In selective cases, the soldiers are demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers. They have begun imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas, in hopes of pressuring the insurgents to turn themselves in.

The Americans embarked on their get-tough strategy in early November, which proved to be the deadliest month yet for U.S. forces in Iraq, with 81 soldiers killed by hostile fire. The response they chose is beginning to echo the Israeli counterinsurgency campaign in the Palestinian territories.

So far, the new approach appears to be succeeding in diminishing the threat to U.S. soldiers. But it appears to be coming at the cost of alienating many of the people the Americans are trying to win over.

Here in Abu Hishma, encased in a razor-wire fence after repeated attacks on U.S. troops, Iraqi civilians line up to go in and out, filing through an American-guarded checkpoint, each carrying an identification card printed in English only.

"If you have one of these cards, you can come and go," coaxed Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman, the battalion commander whose men oversee the village, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. "If you don't have one of these cards, you can't."

The Iraqis nodded and edged their cars through the line. Over to one side,

an Iraqi man named Tariq muttered in anger.

"I see no difference between us and the Palestinians," he said. "We didn't expect anything like this after Saddam fell."

The practice of destroying buildings where Iraqi insurgents are suspected of planning or mounting attacks has been used for decades by Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli army has also imprisoned the relatives of suspected terrorists, in the hopes of pressuring the suspects to surrender, and has also cordoned off villages and towns thought to be hotbeds of guerrilla activity, in an effort to control the flow of people moving in and out.

U.S. officials say they are not purposefully mimicking Israeli tactics, but they acknowledge that they have studied closely the Israeli experience in urban fighting. Ahead of the war, Israeli defense experts briefed American commanders on their experience in guerrilla and urban warfare. The Americans say there are no Israeli military advisers helping U.S. forces in Iraq.

American officers here say their new hard-nosed approach reflects a more realistic appreciation of the military and political realities faced by U.S. soldiers in the Sunni triangle, the area north and west of Baghdad that is generating the most violence against the Americans.

Underlying the new strategy, the Americans say, is the conviction that only a tougher approach will quell the insurgency and that the new strategy must punish not just the guerrillas but also make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating.

"You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the 4th Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force -- force, pride and saving face."

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top military commander in Iraq, announced the get-tough strategy in early November. After the announcement, some U.S. officers warned that the scenes that would follow would not be pretty.

Speaking in Baghdad on Saturday, Sanchez said attacks on allied forces or gunfights with adversaries across Iraq had dropped to fewer than 20 a day now from 40 a day two weeks ago.

The problems in Abu Hishma, a town of 7,000, began in October, when the U. S. military across the Sunni triangle decided to ease off on their military operations to coincide with the onset of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

In Abu Hishma, as in other towns, the backing off by the Americans was not reciprocated by the insurgents. U.S. troops regularly came under mortar fire, often traced to the surrounding orchards.

Meanwhile, the number of bombs planted on nearby roads rose sharply. Army convoys regularly took fire from a house a few miles from the village.

The last straw for the Americans came on Nov. 17, when a group of guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the front of a Bradley armored personnel carrier, killing a crewman. Soldiers began encasing the town in razor wire.

The next day, an American jet dropped a 500-bomb on the house that had been used to attack them. The Americans arrested 10 sheikhs, the mayor, the police chief and most of the city council.

"We really hammered the place," Maj. Darron Wright said.

Two and a half weeks later, the town of Abu Hishma is enclosed in a barbed-wire fence that stretches for five miles. Men ages 18 to 65 have been ordered to get identification cards. There is only one way into the town and one way out.

"This fence is here for your protection," reads the sign posted in front of the barbed-wire fence. "Do not approach or try to cross, or you will be shot."

U.S. forces have used the tactic in other cities, including Owja, Saddam Hussein's birthplace near Tikrit. U.S. forces also sealed off three towns in western Iraq for several days.

"With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them," Sassaman said.

U.S. officers acknowledge that they have destroyed buildings. In a recent news conference, Sanchez explained the strategy but ignored a question about parallels to the Israeli experience.

"Well, I guess what we need to do is go back to the laws of war and the Geneva convention and all of those issues that define when a structure ceases to be what it is claimed to be and becomes a military target," Sanchez said. "We've got to remember that we're in a low-intensity conflict where the laws of war still apply."

In Abu Hishma, residents complain that the village is locked down for 15 hours a day, meaning that they are unable to go to the mosque for morning and evening prayers. They say the curfew does not allow them time to stand in the daylong lines for gasoline and get home before the gate closes for the night.

"This is absolutely humiliating," said Yasin Mustafa, a 39-year-old primary school teacher. "We are like birds in a cage."