Truce holds as Israeli troops fire on Gazans at border fence, kill 1

Palestinians gather Friday along the Israeli-Gaza border fence east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip.
Palestinians gather Friday along the Israeli-Gaza border fence east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip.

— Israeli troops fired on Gazans surging toward Israel’s border fence Friday, killing one person but leaving intact the fragile 2-day-old ceasefire between Hamas and the Jewish state.

The truce, which calls for an end to Gaza rocket fire on Israel and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, came after eight days of cross-border fighting, the bloodiest between Israel and Hamas in four years.

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, the Palestinian U.N. observer, Riyad Mansour, called the situation in Gaza “extremely fragile” and said Israel’s cease-fire violations and other illegal actions risk undermining the calm that was just restored.

Hundreds of Palestinians approached the border fence Friday in several locations in southern Gaza, testing expectations Israel would no longer enforce a 300-yard-wide no-go zone on the Palestinian side of the fence that was meant to prevent infiltrations into Israel. In the past, Israeli soldiers routinely opened fire on those who crossed into the zone.

In one incident captured on video, several dozen Palestinians, most of them young men, approached the fence, drawing close to a group of Israeli soldiers standing on the other side.

Some Palestinians briefly talked to the soldiers, while others appeared to be taunting them with chants of “God is Great” and “Morsi, Morsi,” in praise of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, whose mediation led to the truce.

At one point, a soldier shouted in Hebrew, “Go there, before I shoot you,” and pointed away from the fence, toward Gaza. The soldier then dropped to one knee, assuming a firing position. Eventually, a burst of automatic fire was heard, but it was not clear whether any of the casualties were from that encounter.

Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said a 20-year-old man was killed and 19 people were wounded by Israeli fire near the border.

Mansour said Israeli forces fatally shot Anwar Abdulhadi Qudaih in the head and injured at least 19 other Palestinian civilians in a border area east of Khan Younis.

During the confrontations, Hamas security tried to defuse the situation and keep the crowds away from the fence.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, a top Hamas official at the ongoing negotiations in Cairo, said the violence would have no effect on the cease-fire.

The crowds were mainly made up of young men but also included farmers hoping to once again farm lands in the buffer zone. Speaking by phone from the buffer zone, 19-year-old Ali Abu Taimah said he and his father were checking 3 acres of family land that have been fallow for several years.

“When we go to our land, we are telling the occupation [Israel] that we are not afraid at all,” he said.

Israel’s military said roughly 300 Palestinians approached the security fence at different points, tried to damage it and cross into Israel. Soldiers fired warning shots in the air, but after the Palestinians refused to move back, troops fired at their legs, the military said. A Palestinian infiltrated into Israel during the unrest, but was returned to Gaza, it said.

The truce allowed Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step back from the brink of a full-fledged war. Over eight days, Israel’s aircraft carried out some 1,500 strikes on Hamas-linked targets, while Gaza fighters fired roughly the same number of rockets at Israel.

The fighting killed 166 Palestinians, including scores of civilians, and six Israelis. Mansour said more than 1,230 Palestinians were injured, mostly women and children.

While Hamas officials have been boasting about the concessions they say they have exacted from Israel, Israeli officials have downplayed the deal, saying nothing had yet been agreed beyond the immediate cessation of hostilities.

On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said dismissively that Hamas’ main achievement so far was getting a document that was typed rather than handwritten. In substance, Israelis said 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 buffer zone.

Hamas leaders said that was but one of the quality-oflife improvements that they had won. They also told their people that Israel would ease restrictions on fishing off the coast and the passage of people and goods through border crossings.

But an Israeli government official said Friday that while Israel had indeed agreed to discuss the issues with the Egyptian sponsors of the cease-fire, its policy had not yet changed.

The buffer zone was established in 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, which it had occupied since the 1967 war. Humanrights 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 swaths of borderland as a “no-go zone” in which soldiers are allowed to open fire on anyone who enters, which military officials have strongly denied.

“In case you were wondering,” Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, a spokesman for the Israeli military, wrote on her Twitter account as reports of Friday’s shooting emerged, “trying to breach Gaza fence in order to enter #Israel is breaking cease-fire. #IDF responding with warning shots.”

Sgt. Ahmed Mahmoud of the Hamas police force said some 2,000 officers had fanned out along the borders 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,” Mahmoud said. “Now we won’t let people go in because of the cease-fire.”

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, was an Israeli jeep and a soldier standing behind its open door. They looked at one another.

The crowds were gone, but a few children ran around more freely in the dirt 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 in time.

Information for this article was contributed by Karin Laub, Sarah El Deeb, Ibrahim Barzak, Amy Teibel and Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press and by Jodi Rudoren, Isabel Kershner, Fares Akram and Gaia Pianigiani of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/24/2012

Upcoming Events