Gaza Cease-Fire Allows Residents to Venture Out
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Version 0 of 1. GAZA CITY — Having piled his grocery cart with tuna cans, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Jell-O, Dr. Ayman Abdullah turned to the toy aisle and invited each of his three children to pick something – a reward, he said, for the nine days they spent indoors during the Israeli bombardment. “They were fed up,” he said, as his daughter Yomna, 9, picked out a snow globe enclosing a hand-holding couple and the word “Love.” She was dressed as if for a party, in a flowered dress and Hello Kitty necklace, as the family took advantage Thursday of a five-hour humanitarian pause in the fighting requested by the United Nations. Nearby was Gaza City’s first traffic jam since July 8, when simmering hostilities erupted between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that dominates Gaza. The cause of the congestion: throngs of people shoving toward cash machines and bank counters, operational for the first time since the violence erupted. Gone were the thuds of Israeli F-16 airstrikes and the smell of cordite that had punctuated days and nights here, along with the ripping sound of Hamas rocket launches. People dragged out plastic chairs to sit under trees, and a few shops opened. Even beggars reappeared. It is Ramadan, the month when observant Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, so some young men complained that the cease-fire had not been held after dark, when they could return to their favorite restaurants. Gazans feel cooped up under normal circumstances, confined by Israeli and, increasingly, Egyptian restrictions to their narrow, 25-mile strip. Under fire, most stay home or close to it, and the normally bustling, dense area of 1.7 million people feels like a ghost town. Dr. Abdullah’s children, he said, became increasingly difficult as the bombardment went on, constantly shouting as their pent-up energy grew along with stress and fear. But as an orthopedic surgeon at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, he was all too aware of the risks of letting them out. Freshest in his mind on Thursday were the deaths of the four young Bakr cousins, killed on Wednesday by an Israeli airstrike as they played on a beach, a place with no apparent militant targets. Israeli attacks have killed more than 200 Palestinians, three-quarters of them civilians, since July 8. Hamas and allied groups have fired 1,000 rockets and mortars at Israel, killing one civilian. That unpredictability – the sense that nowhere is safe – is why some were unwilling to test the quiet. A proposed cease-fire on Tuesday, rejected by Hamas, had failed after just a few hours when the group fired mortars and Israel responded, ending its unilateral pause. On the beach near Gaza City’s small fishing harbor, where the Bakr boys were killed, the other children who play there during normal times had not returned. Nothing moved but the waves and the occasional journalist investigating the scene. “We are very afraid of these quiet times because we don’t know what will happen afterwards,” said Amira Hassouneh, 34, as she perused a shelf of dish soap in the supermarket. She has been disappointed before, finding that when a similar conflict in 2008 ended, new problems awaited. Israeli forces bulldozed her house, which fronted open fields near the Gaza-Israel boundary. She rebuilt it, but it took four years, because of Israeli restrictions on importing building materials. Whatever the misgivings, there was one major incentive for Gazans to venture out: Banks were dispensing cash for the first time since before the conflict began. Banks have been periodically shut down amid simmering disputes between Hamas, which controls Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority, based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The authority has refused to pay Hamas employees since forming a so-called national unity government last month – while paying authority employees who have not worked since 2007, when Hamas seized control of the territory from the rival party, Fatah. Riots broke out over pay last month, as Hamas supporters attacked banks and Fatah employees lining up to withdraw salaries, and banks have been periodically closed to prevent more unrest. That dispute remains unresolved, another reminder of the myriad problems that await Gaza even if the bombs and rockets stop. A deal was struck to open banks and cash machines Thursday – still for Palestinian Authority employees only — but there was a mild panic as some A.T.M. screens remained dark because of malfunctions and huge crowds crushed around those that worked. “There is money, but there is no time to withdraw it before 3,” said one man waiting near a bank. The pause was bracketed by attacks from both sides. In Rafah, in southern Gaza, three people were killed by an Israeli air or artillery strike moments before the pause took effect at 10 a.m. At noon, Hamas fired three mortar shells into Israel, but otherwise things were quiet. But as soon as the designated pause ended at 3 p.m., militants fired a new rocket barrage into southern Israel. Within an hour, the whoosh of fighter jets was again a constant over Gaza City. |