Doubt over tangible benefits of fragile agreementFrom Louisa Waugh in Gaza City
"WE used to negotiate over the Israeli settlements and the final status of Jerusalem; now we are negotiating over getting some fuel into Gaza," says Samer. "This is not peace - this is like trying to survive hell."
Samer lives on the edge of Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip, where fuel is still in such short supply that some people are resorting to combing the streets for bits of wood and paper so they can light fires at home and cook. Summer is intensely hot in Gaza, but with chronic shortages of cooking gas and oil, choice is a luxury many people do not have.
This has turned out to be yet another grim week in the Gaza Strip, a territory that has already been through one of its grimmest years on record. After a year of relentless Israeli siege, which has crippled the economy and imprisoned the almost 1.5 million civilians living in the beleaguered coastal strip, the six-month Tahdiya, or "calming", brokered between Israel and Hamas by Egypt was supposed to inject a dose of desperately needed hope.
But from the outset, the Tahdiya has been fraught. It began at 6am on June 19. I was startled awake about 15 minutes beforehand by the familiar pounding of bombs: Israel was bombing northern Gaza, a few miles from where I live but close to Samer's home. At six o'clock exactly, the bombing stopped. But this did not bode well.
On June 24, less than a week into the Tahdiya, the Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza claimed responsibility for firing three rockets towards the Israeli town of Sderot. This, according to a statement from Islamic Jihad, was "an exceptional message in response to Israeli occupation crimes in the West Bank". Israel had just killed a member of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank city of Nablus, and a young Palestinian student also died in the attack. The Tahdiya does not extend to the West Bank, but Islamic Jihad was clearly warning Israel not to use the Tahdiya to step up military operations in the West Bank.
This also underlines the determination of Palestinian political factions to try and maintain their power in Gaza, where Hamas has warned all factions against violating the Tahdiya.
On Thursday afternoon, the Fatah- aligned Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade also fired a rocket from Gaza towards Sderot, demanding the West Bank be included in the terms of the Tahdiya. Another two rockets were launched from Gaza on Friday morning, and Israel and Hamas are now both apparently reconsidering their options. Despite both sides loudly accusing each other of breaching the Tahdiya, they need this fragile agreement to work.
But inside Gaza, people are exhausted, depressed, and overwhelmingly doubtful the Tahdiya will hold or make any tangible difference to life here. "We have literally heard it all before," says Samer. "When the borders open, then we will know something has changed."
Five of the six crossings into the Gaza Strip remain sealed by Israel, which is deliberately stalling to pressurise Hamas to stop rockets being launched from inside Gaza, although Karni crossing - the main commercial crossing into Gaza - is apparently scheduled to open to deliver essential food supplies if Israel permits it.
The Rafah Crossing to Egypt - the only crossing not officially controlled by Israel - has not been fully opened for more than two years. More than anything, Gazans want Rafah Crossing to be open so they have the choice to leave what has become their prison.
Israel, also preoccupied with the fate of its intransigent prime minister, Ehud Olmert, seems unable to make any long-term decision about its troublesome southern neighbour. Gaza city and Ashkelon are just seven miles apart, but may as well be on different planets.
The buffer zone between the Gaza Strip and Israel officially extends to just 150 metres on either side of the border. Israel claims it has been forced to extend the buffer zone on the Gazan side because of the rockets targeting nearby Israeli cities. Israeli troops frequently enter Gaza in tanks and bulldozers, and have destroyed more than 1200 acres of agricultural land inside Gaza this year. Most of this ruined land is in south eastern Gaza, where hundreds of Gazan farming families living near the Israeli border have fled their land because of these almost daily incursions.
I visited one farmer, Jaber Nasser, while he stood amid the putrefying ruins of his chicken farm. "I spent 18 years working day and night with my brothers to build up this farm," he said. "We had 40,000 chickens and a good business, but the Israeli army bulldozed my farm in four hours, and killed 30,000 live chickens. Now I have nothing."
For these Palestinian farming families, the Tahdiya potentially represents an opportunity to return to their land and salvage their lives. But the Israeli military opened fire at farmers attempting to access their own land near the eastern border this week, injuring an 80-year-old farmer.
This has been a bloody year in Gaza. The Israeli military has killed 383 people, more than half of them unarmed civilians, including 59 children.
Israel's draconian siege of the Gaza Strip has been a colossal failure in terms of weakening Hamas. "The siege and closure of Gaza have not affected Hamas, which is now stronger than ever before," says Hamdi Shaqqura, a senior researcher at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. "Israel has a pattern of using civilians for political leverage, and the civilians of Gaza are the only people who have suffered as a result of this illegal siege."
Hamas has emerged as a force for Israel to reckon with. But for people in Gaza, the fragile Tahdiya has so far changed nothing. As Samer puts it: "Life in Gaza has stopped."
