Cease-Fire in Gaza Begins

Cease-Fire in Gaza Begins, and Israel Says Its Troops Are Gone

By STEVEN ERLANGER and BEN HUBBARD

As a 72-hour cease-fire mediated by Egypt took hold Tuesday morning, Israel announced that it had withdrawn its forces from Gaza and Hamas said it would engage in talks on a lasting arrangement to keep the peace.

Most Israeli troops had already pulled back from populated areas in Gaza, and many had redeployed in Israel. But as late as Monday, Israeli officials had said that the army would maintain some positions inside Gaza, and the announcement of a complete pullout appeared to be a major concession to the Egyptian initiative. By late morning, the chief army spokesman, Gen. Moti Almoz, said all Israeli forces had left Gaza. “There were a number of forces inside,” he told army radio. “But all of them have left.”

Gaza officials say that 1,834 Palestinians have died in the conflict, most of them civilians. Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed since fighting began on July 8.

Just before the cease-fire went into effect at 8 a.m., a last salvo of rockets were fired toward Israel from Gaza, causing warning sirens to sound in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, while the Israeli air force carried out at least five strikes in Gaza, a customary “last word” before another in a series of conflicts between Israel and Hamas comes to an end.

In Gaza City, there was little sense of celebration that the fighting had stopped, although many of those interviewed said they thought this cease-fire was more likely to succeed than previous ones, which quickly collapsed amid new violence.

Gaza’s streets slowly filled with cars, donkey carts and trucks, many of them piled with the belongings of displaced families moving from one spot to another toting mattresses, kitchen supplies and bags of clothes.

Residents began to venture out more freely, going to shops and banks, or just taking a walk. Fruit stands were full of pears and watermelons, though they had few customers. Men had returned to their familiar stations on plastic chairs outside electronics shops. A pack of adolescent boys strode down one street; two on bicycles streamed down another. A man sat in a barber’s chair, orange smock on his shoulders, getting a trim.

Many of the shops displayed merchandise they had hoped to sell for the holiday at the end of Ramadan but left locked up in storerooms because of the conflict. Many gas stations were closed, and given the lack of electricity, traffic lights were out.

Hundreds of thousands of people remained displaced in schools and with friends and relatives, because the destruction wrought by the war left them with no homes to return to.

“I just came back to see my house,” said Jihad Harara, 65, sitting on a plastic chair in front of a damaged mosque in eastern Gaza City. Across the street stretched an expanse of collapsed apartment buildings that now lay in a mess of concrete and rebar. “Even if I can’t sleep there, I wanted to see it.”

His brother, Fouad Harara, 55, said he had worked for decades as laborer in Israel in order to build his house, which had also been erased by the war. “The only thing we gained is destruction,” he said. “We lost in one instant all we had worked for 40 years to build.”

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, the Israeli military spokesman, said that Israel had completed the destruction of “approximately 32 tunnels” built by Hamas and leading into Israel, and that Israeli forces had killed “approximately 900 militants in combat.” He said that Israel had destroyed more than 3,000 rockets belonging to Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad, that those groups had launched more than 3,300 rockets toward Israel, and that Israel believed they had remaining stocks of 3,000 rockets.

Lieutenant Lerner said Israel remained wary and would respond to attacks on its civilians or forces. “We will continue to maintain defensive positions from the air, the coast and the ground outside the Gaza Strip,” he said. Noting that previous cease-fires have collapsed, he said, “it all depends on what happens.”

But Hamas and Islamic Jihad appeared ready for the conflict to come to a halt. They accepted an Egyptian proposal little changed from one that they had rejected earlier in the conflict; an earlier American attempt at a similar cease-fire also broke down quickly.

The Egyptians hope to begin talks in Cairo with all the concerned parties on how to turn the 72-hour pause into a more durable peace. In addition to the casualties in Gaza, the area’s infrastructure, including electricity, water and sewage systems, has been badly damaged. According to the United Nations, about 260,000 of Gaza’s 1.8 million people have been displaced by the fighting.