GAZA CITY — In war,
nobody wants to be the last to die. In Gaza, it was the chief of the
electric company’s maintenance division and his deputy. In Israel, it
was a pair of volunteers working a security detail on their kibbutz.
The
four deaths on Tuesday, hours before an open-ended cease-fire began
between Israel and Hamas, reflected the often indiscriminate, opaque and
lethal nature of a conflict that dragged on for 50 days and more than
2,100 deaths, only to end where it began, with a truce deal that is
essentially a retread of the one signed in 2012 after the last Gaza war.
The cease-fire
was still holding Wednesday, and that was good news in a conflict beset
by breaches by Hamas and the other militant resistance groups operating
in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli drones could still be heard flying
circles overhead, but there was no rocket or missile fire. In Gaza,
fishermen went further out to sea than they have in years, and farmers
were allowed to work fields close to the Israel fence line.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel had dealt Hamas “the greatest blow
since the organization’s founding.” But in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, the
Hamas leader there, praised the 1.8 million residents of Gaza as “the
true heroes.” It was Haniyeh’s first public appearance since the war
began seven weeks ago.
GAZA CITY — In war,
nobody wants to be the last to die. In Gaza, it was the chief of the
electric company’s maintenance division and his deputy. In Israel, it
was a pair of volunteers working a security detail on their kibbutz.
The
four deaths on Tuesday, hours before an open-ended cease-fire began
between Israel and Hamas, reflected the often indiscriminate, opaque and
lethal nature of a conflict that dragged on for 50 days and more than
2,100 deaths, only to end where it began, with a truce deal that is
essentially a retread of the one signed in 2012 after the last Gaza war.
The cease-fire
was still holding Wednesday, and that was good news in a conflict beset
by breaches by Hamas and the other militant resistance groups operating
in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli drones could still be heard flying
circles overhead, but there was no rocket or missile fire. In Gaza,
fishermen went further out to sea than they have in years, and farmers
were allowed to work fields close to the Israel fence line.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel had dealt Hamas “the greatest blow
since the organization’s founding.” But in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, the
Hamas leader there, praised the 1.8 million residents of Gaza as “the
true heroes.” It was Haniyeh’s first public appearance since the war
began seven weeks ago.
“I could recognize his shoes,” he said.
Israel’s senior
military spokesman, Lt. Col Peter Lerner, said that the truck was
identified as “escaping the scene of a rocket launch.”
Mohammad Daher was no militant, his family said.
“He
worked two shifts a day, morning and night,” his brother said. “It was a
dangerous job. They worked while the Israelis were shelling them. He kept the lights on.”
Why
was his truck targeted? His brothers said the four-door Toyota was
clearly marked with the logo of the electric company and flying a
company flag, which sports a red lightning bolt.
“He was killed
because he was a Palestinian,” his brother said. “He was a father and a
grandfather. He was an old guy. He didn’t have a gun or a jet plane.”
Jamal
Dardasawi, a public information officer for the Gaza electricity
company, told the Palestinian news agency Maan that he believed the work
truck was deliberately targeted. Daher and his extended family are
Fatah loyalists, members not of Hamas but the party led by Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Inside Israel, a few hours after Daher was killed, a dozen mortar rounds from Gaza rained down on a kibbutz called Nirim.
It
was just an hour before the cease-fire began. Shahar Melamed, 43, and
Zeevik Etzion, 55, were outside repairing an electricity line damaged by
an attack earlier that day.
Etzion, a father of five, headed the
community’s security detail and Melamed, a father of three, volunteered
as his deputy. He was also responsible for irrigation of the kibbutz
crops. The two men died in the mortar barrage.
“Everyone here is
in great pain after what happened yesterday,” said Dedy Rubenstein, who
runs an agricultural cooperative for farming communities in the south.
“We have not started mourning for them yet. Everyone is too busy making
the preparations for their funerals.”
“This is a very intimate
community, we are all very close and know each other very well,” said
Rubenstein, adding that this quiet kibbutz of only 380 members was also
now struggling with all the media attention.
Rubenstein said the fact the two were killed just before the
cease-fire went into effect was irrelevant. “It only takes a second for
this to happen and it does not matter if it happens during the first day
or the last day,” he said.
More than half the kibbutz residents,
particularly those with young children, had fled their homes during the
50 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
“The last four
days was literally a battlefield here, not a place for kids,” said
Rubenstein, describing constant code red sirens, rockets falling and
mortar shells being fired at the kibbutz. “Only those that had to work,
manage the animals and tend to the fields stayed here. The others left.”
“The
other side tried to destroy us, they tried to make us leave,” said
Rubenstein, referring to Hamas. “But we are committed to staying here,
this is our home, we won’t leave.”
From each side on Wednesday, Israeli and Palestinian leaders competed to claim that their side had won.
Speaking at a news conference in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said Israel had achieved a great political and military success.
“A
thousand Hamas terrorists were killed, many of them commanders,’’
Netanyahu said.”Thousands of rocket arsenals, launch sites and weapons
caches were destroyed along with hundreds of command centers.’’
Instead
of the triumph claimed by Hamas leaders and militants, the Israeli
prime minister stressed that Hamas and the Palestinians had won nothing.
“They
demanded a seaport and did not achieve this; they demanded an airport
and did not achieve this; they demanded the release of prisoners placed
back under arrest following the murder of the three Israeli boys; they
demanded monetary compensation and salaries which they did not receive;
they demanded that negotiations be conducted by Turkey or Qatar and this
they did not get,” Netanyahu said.
Haniyeh, the Hamas leader,
delivered his speech in the Shijaiyah neighborhood in east Gaza City,
which now was in ruins after serving as the front lines during the
Israeli ground offensive. Haniyeh promised, “this victory will lead the
way to Jerusalem.”
During his speech, burly fighters dressed in black, their faces masked, from the Hamas military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, milled in the crowd. They were brandishing weapons and posing for photos with children.
Eglash reported from Nirim. Hazem Balousha in Gaza contributed to this report.
