An open-ended ceasefire
in the Gaza war was holding as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced strong
criticism in Israel over a costly conflict with Palestinian fighters in which
no clear victor emerged.
On the streets of the
battered, Hamas-run Palestinian enclave, people headed to shops and banks,
trying to resume the normal pace of life after seven weeks of fighting.
Thousands of others, who
had fled the battles and sheltered with relatives or in schools, returned
home, where some found only rubble, Reuters news agency reported.
Al Jazeera's Andrew
Simmons, reporting from Gaza, said people were now trying to work out what to
do next.
"The United Nations
estimates that if restrictions remain in place the way they have been, it
will take something like 15 years to reconstruct the Gaza Strip," our
correspondent said.
"A lot rests on
whether the new deal will speed up the delivery of building materials. There
is a long way to go with this deal, and there is another fact that needs to
be put forward and that is that the UN believes that the level of damage, the
scale of loss, is something like three times the 2008/09 war."
The agreement, which went
into force at 1600 GMT on Tuesday, saw the warring sides agree to a
"permanent" ceasefire which Israel said would not be limited by
time, in a move hailed by the United States, the United Nations and top world
diplomats.
Both Israel and Hamas
hailed the ceasefire as a victory, while experts said the two sides had
agreed to halt their fire out of exhaustion after seven weeks of fighting,
which has claimed the lives of 2,143 Palestinians and 70 on the Israeli side.
"After 50 days of
fighting, the two sides were exhausted so that's why they reached a
ceasefire," Middle East expert Eyal Zisser told AFP.
Politically, Hamas had
"not achieved anything" but to really weaken it, Israel would have
to resume peace talks with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, he said.
Under the deal, Israel
will ease restrictions on the entry of goods, humanitarian aid and
construction materials into Gaza, and it expanded the offshore area open to
Palestinian fishermen to six nautical miles.
Leadership criticised
As sirens warning of
incoming rocket fire from the Gaza Strip fell silent in Israel, media
commentators, echoing attacks by members of Netanyahu's governing coalition,
voiced deep disappointment over his leadership during the most prolonged bout
of Israeli-Palestinian violence in a decade.
"After 50 days of warfare
in which a terror organisation killed dozens of soldiers and civilians,
destroyed the daily routine [and] placed the country in a state of economic
distress ... we could have expected much more than an announcement of a
ceasefire," Reuters reported analyst Shimon Shiffer as writing in Yedioth
Ahronoth, Israel's biggest-selling newspaper.
"We could have
expected the prime minister to go to the President's Residence and inform him
of his decision to resign his post."
Netanyahu, who has faced
constant sniping in his cabinet from right-wing ministers demanding military
action to topple Hamas, made no immediate comment on the truce.
Palestinian health
officials say 2,139 people, most of them civilians, including more than 490
children, have been killed in the enclave since July 8, when Israel launched
an offensive with the declared aim of ending rocket salvos.
Israel's death toll stood
at 64 soldiers and six civilians.
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