Gaza struggles to come to terms with peace

Israel hopes to pull all its troops out of the Gaza Strip by the time Barack Obama is inaugurated as president of the United States tomorrow.

In Gaza’s biggest city, streets filled with people and cars today as residents began picking up the pieces of the lives they led before Israel’s three-week air and ground onslaught.

Destruction in some areas of Gaza City was so widespread that streets resembled a moonscape.

Damage elsewhere appeared pinpointed, with isolated homes flattened or demolished. Shattered glass and mounds of rubble littered city streets. Donkey carts hauled produce and firewood through streets littered with rubble and broken glass.

Israel launched the war on December 27 in an effort to halt years of militant rocket fire on its southern communities and arms smuggling into Gaza. The Israeli government declared a ceasefire that went into effect early yesterday, and hours later, Hamas agreed to silence its guns, too.

A swift withdrawal would reduce the likelihood of clashes between militants and Israeli troops that could rupture the truce.

By getting its soldiers out before the Obama inauguration, Israel would spare the new administration the trouble of having to deal with a burning problem in Gaza from day one. Mr Obama has said Middle East peace will be a priority for his administration.

Thousands of Israeli troops have left Gaza, but large contingents of soldiers have been kept close to the border on the Israeli side, prepared to re-enter if violence reignites.

No violations of the truce have been reported since Hamas ceased fire yesterday, but the quiet remains tenuous because neither side achieved long-term goals.

Israel won a decisive battlefield victory but did not win a permanent end to Hamas rocket fire or solve the problem of smuggled arms reaching Gaza militants. Ending arms smuggling will require international involvement and tough diplomacy.

Hamas remained firmly in power in Gaza, but the scale of death and destruction was staggering.

The militants also failed to turn Gaza into a graveyard for masses of Israeli troops, as they had promised.

At least 1,259 Palestinians were killed, more than half of them civilians, according to the United Nations, Gaza health officials and rights groups. Thirteen Israelis died, including four soldiers killed inadvertently by their own forces’ fire.

Hamas today said 48 of its fighters died, its first statement on losses suffered during the offensive. The number is far below the hundreds of militants Israel claims it killed.

Israel’s fierce assault inflicted unprecedented destruction on Gaza.

Tanks had been stationed on the rim of Gaza City, and destruction there was heavy. Shells turned some buildings into heaps of concrete while the tanks themselves rammed into the sides of others, peeling off pieces. Orange and olive groves were flattened.

Further inside the city, the parliament building and other targets of Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships were reduced to piles of debris.

Palestinian surveyors estimate the war destroyed over €1bn worth of buildings roads, power lines and pipes in the already impoverished territory.

Arab and Western countries will be expected to foot most of the bill. .

But the delivery of Western aid will be complicated because Western powers class Hamas as a terrorist organisation and refuse to deal with it.