Said Khatib/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A group of Palestinians run from the Israel-Gaza border, as an Israeli army vehicle drives along the security fence, in the southeast Gaza Strip on Friday.
GAZA — Health officials said on Friday that a 20-year-old Palestinian was killed and nine others wounded in a clash with Israeli soldiers in the southeast Gaza Strip, testing the cease-fire between Hamas and Israel after wild celebrations here on Thursday.
The leadership in Gaza has said that the agreement, announced on Wednesday in Cairo to end eight days of ferocious exchanges, includes an Israeli promise to halt “incursions” into a 1,000-foot-wide buffer zone along Gaza’s northern and eastern borders where Palestinians have been banned.
Maan, the Palestinian news agency, reported that a group of Palestinians went to Abassan, a border area east of the southern town of Khan Younis, on Friday to pray on their land, and ended up throwing stones at soldiers, who responded with gunfire. Ashraf al-Qedra, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, identified the man who was killed as Ahmad Qudaih.
It remained unclear whether Hamas would depict the episode as a violation of the still uncertain cease-fire.
The border area has long been a focal point of tension. In the days leading up to Israel’s military offensive against Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, Palestinian militants fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli military jeep patrolling the border, injuring four soldiers, and Hamas claimed responsibility for detonating a tunnel packed with explosives that ran along the border while an Israeli force was nearby.
Capt. Eytan Buchman, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said that about 300 Palestinians were demonstrating at various points along the border fence on Friday, prompting Israeli soldiers to fire warning shots in the air. Then some demonstrators “tried to damage the fence and cross into Israel,” Captain Buchman said. “When that happened, the forces fired at their feet.”
Captain Buchman said that one Palestinian demonstrator had managed to cross into Israel but he was returned to Gaza immediately. Israel says its actions are designed to keep Palestinians away from the security fence.
The episode came a day after Palestinians erupted in triumphant celebrations here on Thursday, vowing new unity among rival factions and a renewed commitment to the tactic of resistance, while Israel’s leaders sought to soberly sell the achievements of their latest military operation to a domestic audience long skeptical of cease-fire deals like the one announced Wednesday night.
Witnesses and Hamas police officers said the shooting Friday happened near the spot where a missile fired by Palestinian militants injured three Israeli soldiers in a jeep stationed along the border fence earlier this month.
They said that as many as 2,000 people had flocked to the area on Thursday in celebration of the cease-fire, and that hundreds returned Friday morning.
Many of them had not been that close to the border in a decade or more: it was considered too dangerous at least since the onset of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, and became officially off limits starting in 2008.
An Israeli government official said on Friday that, as part of the latest cease-fire understandings, Israel agreed to discuss the buffer zone with the Egyptian sponsors of the truce. But, the official added, no negotiations have taken place yet. For now, the official said, Israel’s regulations for maintaining the zone and the army’s rules of engagement remain unchanged.
A Palestinian who approached the security fence on Friday, Eyad Qudaih, 38, said he had not visited his modest farm measuring around 1.7 acres close to the fence in the 12 years he had lived in one of the few scattered houses in the buffer zone. The feeling of standing on his land, he said, “was like someone who is hungry and had a big meal, grilled sheep with nuts.”
Someone planted a green Hamas flag on a long pole atop the fence, and a smaller Palestinian one nearby, unimaginable sights only a few days ago. Some Palestinians talked to Israeli soldiers through the fence, according to witnesses and photographs posted on the Internet.
One Hamas police officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, said some people went over a part of the fence knocked down by the jeep attack earlier this month, but it was unclear whether this happened Thursday or Friday.
Israeli Troops Kill a Palestinian in Shooting That Tests Cease-Fire
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Israeli Troops Kill a Palestinian in Shooting That Tests Cease-Fire
