Cautious optimism over Gaza truce

By Aleem Maqbool
BBC News, Gaza City

The Islamic Jihad say they welcome the truce and will respect it

Whether or not people in the Gaza Strip believe the truce with Israel will last, it has at least provided a small degree of hope, in a place where there has been so little of late.

At the beginning of this ceasefire, there has undoubtedly been a sense of relief in Gaza, albeit tentative.

This is a society that has been worn down and traumatised by almost daily deaths and injuries in Israeli military operations.

People we have spoken to seem to be willing the new calm to last - few expect it to though.

"We have been suffering for so long," said Muhammed Mahmoud Nasrallah, who lives in the Zaytoun area of Gaza City.

"We really hope this truce will solve our problems. But we're cautious, because there have been ceasefires before that have not lasted for more than a few weeks."

Abu Ahmed, out shopping in Palestine Square in the centre of the city, expressed the deep mistrust of the Israeli government that many here feel.

"Our experience of the occupation is that our occupiers never fulfil any of their commitments," he said.

Return to arms

On his farm, close to Gaza's northern border with Israel, Essam Abu Halima told us he had been frightened when working on his land, because of the Israeli air-strikes close by.

Other farmers had been killed, he said.

If the Israeli side violates the truce, absolutely the Islamic Jihad movement reserves the right to respond Khaled al Batsh Islamic Jihad militant

Then, a clue as to why the area had been targeted. Essam pointed to a spot next to a field of cucumbers. There, lay the remnants of a rocket launcher, and an unexploded home-made rocket.

Palestinian militants had been there just 24 hours before the ceasefire was due to start, trying to launch the missile into Israel.

Essam said he did feel a bit safer, now there was a truce, but that his life would only really get better when Israel also lifted the blockade it has imposed on Gaza.

"Under the sanctions, we'll continue to suffer," he said. "We cannot export our goods, and there is not even any diesel here. I have to use cooking oil as fuel in my tractor."

Militants across the territory have been packing away their weapons. But if Israel does not re-open Gaza's borders, or if more Palestinians are killed, the militants have stated that they will not hesitate to return to arms.

"We welcome this truce, and we will respect it, we are not going to violate it," Khaled al Batsh, a leader of Islamic Jihad told me.

"But if the Israeli side violates the truce, absolutely the Islamic Jihad movement reserves the right to respond."

Taking revenge

The last ceasefire Hamas entered in to, in November 2006, collapsed after five months.

The Egyptian-mediated truce took effect at dawn on Thursday

Although Israeli operations had stopped in Gaza, militants there felt compelled to respond to the killing of nine Palestinians in the West Bank one weekend in April 2007.

They fired a barrage of rockets at Israeli towns, a campaign they have since sustained for over a year, in spite of the hundreds of Palestinians killed in retaliatory Israeli attacks.

Hamas has now, once again, reluctantly signed up to a truce that only applies to Gaza, not the West Bank. But it says it will abide by it, and has convinced all of Gaza's other militant groups to do the same.

That is not how Khaled al Batsh of Islamic Jihad seemed to have read the agreement.

"What if an Islamic Jihad militant is killed in the West Bank later this week?" I asked him, as we talked about this new truce.

"We will take revenge, of course," he said.