The streets are alive again. The Jundi park was humming with boisterous children and families, makeshift sheesha cafes, and peanut and corn vendors Thursday.
The fruit vendors, too, have resumed marketed their produce on donkey carts via megaphone along the city streets.
But overshadowing it all is an uncertain feeling that this sense of security, like everything else here, is temporary. The "interim" agreement is temporary. The refugee issue is "temporary". Our legal status is "temporary".
You can sense it in people's tones; the fear of the unknown; of abandonment; of complete and total catastrophe and implosion. Even the head of Rafah's preventive security branch. "How can I serve and protect our society if I can't even protect myself?" he confided. "Forget about a two-state solution. Forget about everything. We'd do well to just stay alive now."
Meanwhile, Israeli executions and attacks continue unabated. OCHA reports that a total of 53 Palestinians- including five children- have been killed and 185 injured from May 16 to June 1.
This does not include two young brothers, 11 and 12, searching for scrap metal to sell this week, when they were
gunned down by Israeli snipers positioned near the border. The soldiers said they thought they were planting a bomb. The reality is-soldiers are authorized to shoot at any moving object that comes within 700 metres of the border.
Over the same period, two Israeli soldiers were injured in Gaza, and two Israeli civilians killed.
