But on 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 as his father once did.
“It was like someone who was hungry and had a big meal,” Mr. Qudaih
said, shortly after touching the border fence for the first time.
“Grilled sheep with nuts.”
But around 11 a.m., the moment was interrupted by the 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, which happened at the same spot where an antitank missile
fired by Palestinians hit an Israeli jeep, wounding four Israeli
soldiers two weeks ago, did not fracture the truce that ended the recent
fighting between Gaza 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 say nothing has been agreed upon
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 the so-called buffer zone, a
1,000-foot-wide strip of land along Gaza’s northern and eastern borders,
that had for years been so tantalizingly close, and yet beyond reach.
Palestinians flocked to the fence on 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 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 killed during the
eight days of escalated fighting.
That the killing on Friday did not incite other violence suggests that
Hamas, the militant Islamic faction that won elections in 2006 and took
full control in 2007, is not looking for reasons to return to battle.
But Ahmed Yousef, 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. Yousef, 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.
Witnesses, including Hamas police officers, said that about 2,000 people
flooded this area of the buffer zone in celebration of the cease-fire
on Thursday, and that as many as 500 returned Friday morning starting at
7. The Israeli military spokesman described it as a demonstration, but
residents said people were just walking the fallow land their fathers
and grandfathers once tilled. Some talked to the soldiers through the
fence. They placed atop it a tall green Hamas flag and a smaller
Palestinian one, a sight unimaginable here a few days — or a few years —
before.
One police officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed
that some crossed over a portion of the fence downed by the recent
attack on the Israeli jeep and stood on the Israeli side.
“In case you were wondering,” Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, a spokeswoman
for the military, wrote on her Twitter account as reports of the
shooting emerged, “trying to breach Gaza fence in order to enter #Israel is breaking cease-fire. #IDF responding with warning shots.”
Eyad Qudaih, who lives in one of the few houses in the area, said that
when he heard the shooting, “I took my girls and escaped.” By afternoon,
his cousin was buried after a funeral procession featuring the flags of
Hamas as well as the rival factions Fatah and Islamic Jihad, an echo of
the post-conflict unity on display here at cease-fire celebrations on Thursday.
Sgt. Ahmed Mahmoud of the Hamas police said about 2,000 officers had
fanned out along the borders on Friday starting at 9 a.m. “to maintain
the security.” In blue camouflage suits and navy jackets, they carried
wooden sticks but no guns, which he said was part of the buffer-zone
arrangement with Israel.
“Within one hour of the shooting, we controlled the area and all the
people were out,” Sergeant Mahmoud said. “Now we won’t let people go
in.”
By 1 p.m., more than a dozen Hamas police officers were arrayed along
the fence, closer than they have dared go in years. Perhaps 50 yards
away, on the other side, an Israeli soldier stood behind the open door
of his jeep.
The crowds were gone, but a few children ran more freely in the field
than they had ever before, one carrying a Palestinian flag. Their
parents and grandparents talked outside, contemplating the fence and
whether they would indeed be free to approach it today, tomorrow, next
week.
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