Palestinian men celebrate the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
GAZA CITY — Palestinians in the Gaza Strip poured into the streets Tuesday to celebrate the announcement that Hamas and Israel have agreed to an open-ended cease-fire after 50 days of warfare that has killed more than 2,200 people.
“We have won,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri exulted at a news conference in front of Shifa Hospital. He said the militant group’s armed wing had accomplished “what no Arab army has done. We have defeated them.”
His exuberance aside, officials from Hamas and another militant group, Islamic Jihad, said the cease-fire agreement essentially brings Israel and Palestinians back to terms agreed upon in the truce signed after the 2012 Gaza war.
Israel also agreed to immediately ease restrictions and allow relief aid and construction materials to enter the coastal enclave. The deal will also allow Gaza fishermen to venture six miles offshore; until now, they had been restricted to three miles.
Other demands by the Palestinians — the building of a seaport and airport, opening all the border crossings and improving the movement of goods and people — are set to be discussed later in Cairo. Israel also will press its demand that Gaza be demilitarized.
U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry welcomed the deal and urged the two sides to “fully and completely comply with its terms.”
Kerry also sounded a note of caution, saying, “We are all aware that this is an opportunity, not a certainty. . . . We are approaching the next phase with our eyes wide open. We have been down this road before and we are all aware of the challenges ahead.”
The cease-fire deal was modest, leaving big questions about who will control the Gaza Strip — current ruler Hamas, which denies Israel’s right to exist, or the Palestinian Authority, which is committed to nonviolence and has been seeking, unsuccessfully, to create a sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza — to be dealt with later.
A senior official in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, speaking about the cease-fire on the condition of anonymity, said Hamas had gained little, if anything, from the 50-day war, which has left vast tracts of Gaza in ruins.
“Hamas is now finally accepting a cease-fire proposal that was first proposed by Egypt on July 15,” the official said. “There is nothing more to the proposal than there was a month and a half ago.”
“We have consistently supported this proposal, and finally Hamas accepted it. It includes an immediate cease-fire and talks in Cairo,” he said.
“If there is a cessation in hostilities, then the crossings will open as normal, humanitarian aid will continue to go in, and the fishermen will be able to go back to the sea,” the Israeli official said.
The official warned, “There have been 11 cease-fire attempts that have either been rejected or violated by Hamas, and the key to moving forward and easing the restrictions is honoring cease-fires.”
In Gaza City, residents who an hour earlier were hunkered down in their houses listening to rocket and missile fire burst into the streets after the deal was announced.
There were fireworks and chants, and flags of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were waved while banners celebrated the sacrifice of the martyrs. Israeli drones continued to fly overhead, as they have for the entire conflict.
As Hamas leaders started to announce the deal, mortar rounds fired from Gaza killed an Israeli civilian and seriously injured several others on a kibbutz near the border.
Israeli airstrikes killed eight people in Gaza on Tuesday.
During his emotional news conference, Abu Zuhri boasted that the Gaza brigades had shut down Tel Aviv’s international airport and that Hamas rocket fire forced Israeli residents in the border communities to flee their homes.
“Whatever Netanyahu says, he will not be able to defend his failure,” the Hamas spokesman said.
Israeli news media reported that the Netanyahu cabinet was split on the decision to accept the cease-fire proposal brokered by Egypt.
The fiercest critic appeared to be the hawkish Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who, according to the news portal Walla, had requested that Netanyahu bring the proposal to a vote among fellow ministers.
Community leaders from Israeli farm towns bordering the Gaza Strip — those who have come under the greatest amount of rocket fire from the strip, especially over the past few days — were skeptical about the cease-fire, telling Israeli news channels that only time would tell whether the deal was for real.
“The leaders on both sides will probably each declare victory while the people on each side do not feel like they are victors at all,” said Miri Eisin, former army colonel who served as the deputy head of the combat intelligence corps.
“I am not sure that this is a cease-fire or that it will be respected any better than the previous ones,” said Giora Eiland, former head of Israel’s National Security Council. “We will need to wait two or three days to see if this is stable enough. All previous declarations were not very reliable.”
“It is much more a lose-lose situation than a decisive victory to either side,” Eiland said.
Critics on Netanyahu’s right wing were complaining that the deal did little to guarantee that Hamas would not quickly rearm and begin firing rockets and mortar rounds again.
“The decision to accept the latest cease-fire with Hamas is completely without justification,” said Danny Danon, a member of parliament and leader of Netanyahu’s Likud party.
“After thousands of rockets fired at our cities, and scores of Israelis killed and wounded, we are agreeing to accept the very situation that allowed Hamas to arm itself and prepare its forces for their murderous attacks on Israel,” Danon said.
Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, made the cease-fire announcement in front of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Ramallah, in the West Bank.
“We accept the cease-fire,” Abbas said. “It will provide food and construction materials for Gaza,” which he described as being in a “disastrous situation, almost unimaginable.”
“Later we will have more talks,” he said.
Eglash reported from Jerusalem. Hazem Balousha in Gaza contributed to this report.
William Booth is The Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief. He was previously bureau chief in Mexico, Los Angeles and Miami.
Ruth Eglash is a correspondent for The Washington Post based in Jerusalem. She was formerly a reporter and senior editor at the Jerusalem Post and freelanced for international media.
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