In addition to relief, some residents felt a sense of déjà vu, having survived several recent wars with Israel. After each war, it takes years for Gaza to recover.
As the first day of a fragile new cease-fire between Israel and Hamas drew to a close, Sami Abul Ouf stood five yards above the ground, teetering atop a dense mound of rubble in Gaza City where his sister’s home once stood. In previous wars with Israel, Mr. Abul Ouf waited out the conflict at her apartment. He considered it an unlikely military target — until an Israeli airstrike hit the building on Sunday, killing his sister, Reem, and at least 12 members of their extended family, he said. “This place used to be a sanctuary,” Mr. Abul Ouf,28, said after clambering down to street level. “But now there is no safety in Gaza. Everyone is exposed to danger.” The skies above Gaza and Israel were silent for the first time in 10 days on Friday night, after a truce between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza, took effect early Friday. But while Israel could quickly rebound, with the authorities reopening roads around Gaza that had been closed during the conflict, the scale of the destruction in Gaza will not allow a return to normality for some time. Central thoroughfares in Gaza City, like Al Wahda Street, where the Abul Ouf family lived, looked like a dystopia. A sea of rubble, several yards high and dozens wide, spread across several streets, blocking half their breadth. A vast crater filled a wide intersection, a burst sewage pipe gurgling at the bottom. A burned-out white car, hit by an airstrike this week, remained on the same spot at the seaside traffic circle where it was struck, forcing drivers to edge around it. In Israel, Hamas rocket fire killed 12 people, wrecked several apartments, cars and buses, damaged a gas pipeline and briefly shut down two major airports, Israeli officials said. The damage in Gaza was incomparable. Israeli airstrikes killed more than 230 people, destroyed more than 1,000 housing and commercial units, rendered more than 750 uninhabitable, and displaced more than 77,000 people, according to tallies compiled by Gazan officials and the United Nations. Seventeen clinics and hospitals were damaged, as well as three major desalination plants, power lines and sewage works, leaving 800,000 residents, or nearly half the population, without easy access to clean drinking water, the United Nations added.
