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A group of Palestinians run from the Israel-Gaza border, as an Israeli army vehicle drives along the security fence, in the southeast Gaza Strip on Friday. More Photos »
KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip — In the 12 years that he has lived here in the Abassam neighborhood adjacent to Gaza’s eastern border, Eyad Qudaih said, he had never ventured more than 20 yards east of his white stucco home because Israel said the entire area was off limits.
But Friday morning, emboldened by the new cease-fire, he took his four young daughters 300 yards east, to the small plot of land where he dreams of growing wheat and malt as his father once did.
“It was like someone who was hungry and had a big meal,” Mr. Qudaih said as he touched the fence that has separated him from the border lands. “Grilled sheep with nuts.”
But around 11 a.m., the moment was interrupted by the all-too-common sound of gunfire. A spokesman for the Israeli military said soldiers had fired warning shots and then at the feet of some Palestinians who tried to cross the border fence into Israeli territory. Mr. Qudaih’s cousin Anwar Qudaih, 20, was killed, and nine others were wounded, Health Ministry officials here in Gaza said.
The episode did not fracture the truce that ended eight days of fighting between Hamas and Israel. But it did showcase the confusion that remains over the cease-fire deal announced Wednesday in Cairo. While Hamas officials have been boasting about the concessions they say they have exacted from Israel, Israeli officials have played down the deal, saying that nothing had yet been agreed beyond the immediate cessation of hostilities.
On Thursday, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, said dismissively that Hamas’s main achievement so far was getting a document that was typed rather than handwritten. In substance, Israelis said that they agreed to discuss the border and other issues, but that those talks had not yet begun — and there did not appear even to be a mechanism in place for starting.
But that was clearly not the understanding of the hundreds of Gazans who thought that they would have access to a strip of fertile land that had for years been so tantalizingly close — and yet beyond their reach. Palestinians flocked to the fence Thursday and Friday because their leaders said the cease-fire eased what they call Israel’s “siege” on Gaza, including restrictions on movement in the so-called buffer zone, a 1,000-foot strip on Gaza’s eastern and northern borders.
Hamas leaders said that was but one of the quality-of-life improvements that they had won. They also told their people that Israel would ease the three-mile limit on how far fishermen can venture from the coastline and the passage of people and goods through border crossings.
But an Israeli government official said on Friday that since no further talks had taken place, its policies had not changed.
Riad al-Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, described Friday’s shooting as a clear violation of the agreement that was signed, telling reporters at an unrelated news conference in Rome, “I hope it will be the exception rather than the rule.”
Health Ministry officials in Gaza said Friday that the Palestinian death toll from the fighting had grown to 167, not including Mr. Qudaih, as several people died of the wounds they had sustained in Israeli airstrikes. Six Israelis, two of them soldiers, were also killed since the escalation began.
That the killing Friday did not incite other violence suggests that Hamas, the militant Islamic faction that has ruled Gaza since 2007, is not looking for excuses to return to battle. But Ahmed Yousif, a former adviser to the Hamas prime minister, said patience would be limited.
“Gradual steps should be taken to give the impression to the people we are no longer under siege,” said Mr. Yousif, who remains close to the Hamas leaders and now runs a research organization called House of Wisdom. “It might take some time, but this is what we’re going to achieve in the long run. As long as there is progress, I think the people will continue the cease-fire. If there is no progress, this will start again.”
The buffer zone was established in 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, which it had occupied since the 1967 war. Human rights organizations say that Israel drops leaflets warning residents to stay out of the area, and that its security forces killed 213 Palestinians near the fence between September 2005 and September 2012, including 154 who were not taking part in hostilities, 17 of them children.
Critics say Israel has classified broad sections of border land as a “no-go zone” in which soldiers are allowed to open fire on anyone who enters, which military officials have strongly denied.
Death of a Palestinian Highlights Confusion Over Gaza Truce
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Death of a Palestinian Highlights Confusion Over Gaza Truce
