Calm on Gaza frontier as truce enters third day

Mazen Muhanna began work at dawn clearing the bleached remains of dozens of olive trees destroyed in an Israeli incursion outside the southern Gaza village of Al-Qarara less than two weeks ago, hoping the truce would last.  Â

"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. Â

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 said, 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.

The truce has however brought a welcome calm to 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 truce is the first since Hamas seized power, and follows months of fighting in which hundreds of Palestinians, mostly militants, have been killed.

Across the border, Israelis living along the Gaza frontier hoped for an end to the near-daily rocket and mortar attacks that have killed four people since January.

Both Hamas and Israel have vowed to respect the truce, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made it clear the armed forces are prepared to act should the ceasefire fail.

The deal also entails a gradual easing of the blockade, which Israeli officials said would begin Sunday if the calm holds.

But in the dusty border town of Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border few people believed the ceasefire would last, and black market petrol smuggled through tunnels from Egypt was selling for the same price it did before the truce.

"If you think the Jews are going to open the border to let petrol in you are dreaming," said Abu Mohammed, as his sons sucked fuel from a plastic tank to siphon it into used soft drink bottles in the heart of a crowded market.

Hamas has said smuggling into Gaza will continue, and on Saturday the streets of Rafah were lined with tables of cheap Chinese goods brought in through the tunnels, which Israel says are also used for bringing in arms.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev insisted Friday that the Egyptian-brokered truce explicitly stated that arms smuggling must halt and said Hamas was "seeking to weaken the peace" by claiming otherwise.

Meanwhile the farmers outside Al-Qarara plan to clear as many of the destroyed olive trees as possible while the calm lasts.

"We can use the trees for fuel," Ayman Smeri, 28, says as he hacks away at the dead branches. "We haven’t had any cooking gas for three weeks because of the siege."