Amid the ruins, a fragile truce and a fragile future for Gaza

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Rory McCarthy in Rafah guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 January 2009 20.57 GMT Article history
For the first time since fighting erupted 22 days ago, journalists were allowed to enter the Gaza Strip on Sunday and speak to residents Link to this video Surrounded by the air strikes, artillery shelling and the destruction of Israel's three-week war in Gaza, Jawad Harb found the hardest thing to take were the questions from his children. On the seventh day, his son Ziad, six, turned to him and asked: "When are we going to die?"

"That really broke my heart," he said. He tried to comfort them. "It's just temporary," he told them. "It will come to an end soon. The whole world will not keep silent while this is going on in Gaza." His daughter, Bamias, 15, turned to him and silenced him with one sentence. "It's temporary forever," she said.

As a fragile truce took hold in Gaza yesterday and an equally fragile future began to emerge, Harb and his wife and their six children were left to reflect on what was left. Finally, for the first time since the war began, people were out on the streets last night, shopping for food and water, exploring for themselves the extent of the damage wreaked on their city. It was apparent everywhere: in the ruins of destroyed houses, the rubble of mosques, police stations, the devastation visited on even the Muntasser park in the heart of the city, the only children's park in Rafah.

Harb's family sat out the war in their second floor apartment in the southern town of Rafah. On the first day they removed the glass from their windows, the cold wind a price worth paying for the most elementary protection. But they were effectively on the front line. Less than 700m away is the border with Egypt. Along the border, hundreds of smuggling tunnels, some bringing weapons to the armed factions, many others simply skirting Israel's long and painful blockade of the Gaza strip to supply food, medicine, even sheep and goats.

For Israel they were a prime target, and so for three weeks Rafah was hit repeatedly with missiles that dug deep into the soil, shaking the ground and delivering profound fear into the hearts of the city's people.

The nights were spent cowering inside, the days spent sleeping, rushing out to collect drinking water and hoping for the end. The nights were worst towards the end, even as negotiations moved towards a ceasefire. On Friday afternoon as the shelling intensified there were rumours in Harb's neighbourhood that a Hamas-run benevolent association, closed since the start of the war, was to be a target.

The building stands barely a few metres from the back of his apartment. Hundreds of people ran from their homes into the streets outside, seeking shelter only in the road. Although the UN had set aside schools nearby as shelters, they were already overcrowded with desperately poor sanitation.

"Sometimes I feel you lose the words to describe what we have been through," said Harb, 44, a qualified nurse who works for the aid agency Care International. "They were trying to terrify us, to intimidate us. Gazans felt abandoned by the whole world. We just heard speeches on the television, but nobody was doing anything for us. I felt completely helpless."

Even as he spoke Israeli drones still circled overhead. Thousands of Israeli troops were still deployed deep inside the Gaza strip. It was a war that Israel did not want the world to see, a war in which Gazan schools, hospitals and UN buildings were shelled and in which hundreds of civilians died. It was a war that Israel's triumphant leaders said was justified by rocket attacks that have terrified the population of southern Israel and killed 20 people in the last eight years. Journalists were banned from entering Gaza, until the Egyptians finally allowed some to cross their border. By then the devastation was too much to hide.

After 22 days of air strikes, artillery from land and sea, tank shelling and ground combat the Palestinian death toll stands at more than 1,200, with bodies being discovered every day under the rubble. Around 5,000 were injured, many of them left with terrible disabilities. On the Israeli side 13 were killed, three of them civilians and four soldiers mistakenly hit by their own troops.

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, announcing a "unilateral ceasefire" on Saturday night, said his forces had struck a "heavy blow" against Hamas, the Islamist movement that won Palestinian elections three years ago and which now runs Gaza.

Even though Hamas in turn announced a week-long ceasefire yesterday, many Gazans already fear that a return to conflict is only days away.

Last night Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas adviser and one of the more moderate voices in the movement, predicted a return to violence. He said Israel's "unilateral ceasefire" left many questions.

"Do they want to keep their forces in Gaza? Make more time for themselves, impose more conditions? Without a comprehensive compromise you cannot have security and safety in Gaza," he said, as he stood at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. "If the occupation goes on, the resistance will go on also."