Tense calm in Gaza as truce seems to hold
Farmers get to tend to their fields
Gaza farmers ventured into the war-scarred land along the frontier under the distant but watchful eyes of Israeli troops, as the truce between Israel and Hamas entered its third day on Saturday.
Mazen Muhanna began work at dawn clearing the bleached remains of dozens of olive trees destroyed in an Israeli incursion less than two weeks ago, hoping the Egyptian-mediated truce would bring an end to the fighting.
"My father planted these trees. They are older than me and I am 45, but they can destroy them in less than a minute," he said.
Since the Islamist Hamas movement seized power over a year ago, farmers along the border have been caught in the crossfire between rocket-launching Palestinian militants and Israeli troops stationed just over the horizon.
"They are both awful, but the Israelis are worse. The resistance just fires rockets, but the Israelis come with tanks and bulldozers," he says, his hand sweeping across a dusty wasteland of mangled trees and meandering tank tracks.
Fadi, a 17-year-old farmer working the same land, says the farmers would prefer Palestinian militants stay away. "But if you say anything to them they will call you an agent (of Israel)," he says.
The farmers hope that an Egyptian brokered ceasefire which took effect Thursday morning will bring an end to the near daily clashes in Gaza, but though the calm has held for more than two days the border remains tense.
Siham Smeri, a farmer and mother of five, says the Israelis still fire warning shots when the farmers get too close to the fence. Her family owns land near the border that they haven't farmed in more than two years.
"The first day of the truce we went to a hill near the border. An Arab Israeli soldier yelled out to us: 'Get away from here or we will shoot you and break the truce'." They haven't been back since.
After months of almost daily Israeli strikes, the truce has brought a welcome calm in Gaza, which has been reeling under a tight embargo Israel imposed after Hamas seized power last June.
Gaza's 1.5 million residents hope the ceasefire will lead to a lifting of a blockade that has devastated their economy and left 80 percent of them reliant on international food aid.
The six-month Egyptian-mediated truce is the first since Hamas seized power, and follows months of fighting in which hundreds of Palestinians, mostly militants, have been killed.