'I want peace. I'm exhausted by war': Gazans speak out amid brief lull

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/15/gaza-city-conflict-brief-ceasefire-peace-war

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It is an optimistic man who opens his mirror shop in the midst of a one-sided and fragile ceasefire.

At his shop on Tuesday morning – an hour after Israel said it was pausing its assault on Gaza – Abdullah Sawafri, aged 62, was sitting outside with his glass cutting tools reading the Qur'an as Gaza's streets filled up in hope of an end to the current eight-day conflict.

"There have been no air strikes since nine this morning," he says, "so I'm optimistic. I haven't had any customers yet but I'm expecting people to call me to fix their broken windows."

Even as he speaks, a rocket flies overhead towards Israel underlining the fragility of the hoped-for cessation in violence. Israel's ceasefire ended a few short hours later when prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, ordered a resumption of attacks in response to ongoing missile fire from Gaza.

But for just under six hours, Gaza exhaled. Its streets filled up and bakeries, barbers, bike shops opened for business.

"I want peace," says Sawafri. "I'm exhausted by war. My own wish is not to see rockets fired from Gaza or fired at Gaza. We just want to live. We have been under siege for so long now that we can't live. What we need is peace and to be able to live like normal people."

At the UN, schools across northern Gaza – opened as refuges for those displaced by the last week of bombing and shelling – families who, only on Monday were carrying their belongings in, hitching their donkey and horse carts to the wall outside, were leaving on the promise of an end to the violence.

Among those leaving was Ahmed Zarteet, aged 23, who had come with 13 members of his family to a school in Jabaliya. Carrying three mattresses on his back out of the gate, he tied them to the roof of a yellow Mercedes taxi for the short ride to his home in Beit Lahia.

"I want to go back," he said, as his wife passed by carrying their small baby. "I want it to be over. But I want it to finish with the resistance's demands fulfilled: an end to the siege, a release of the prisoners and an opening of the crossings.

"Maybe it is finishing, maybe it will escalate. But we should finish with a strong resistance."

Da'a Musleh, aged 25, had taken her 20-month-old daughter Tala to the family's bakery in Gaza City's Nasser Street. A radio journalist who has not worked since the start of the conflict, she explained that Tala had been born a few weeks before the last conflict with Israel in 2012.

"When she was a little baby the sound of the bombs made her cry. Now the sound makes her run to me.

"This is the first time we've left the house in the last eight days. There are four of us in a tiny flat. Tala has been crying everyday that she wants to go out. I took her with me today so we could both come out and breathe for the first time.'