MIDDLE EAST: Just four days before Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas meet for summit talks, Nuala Haughey reports from Gaza amid the signs of four years of fighting.
Calm is not a word which immediately springs to mind when one thinks Gaza Strip, the small coastal enclave where the scars of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are yet raw.
The unmistakeable signs of the Israeli occupation and more than four years of fighting are everywhere here, from the rubble of houses razed in Israeli incursions to the army look-out posts peppered along the edges of the strip's Jewish settlements.
Yet calm indeed has descended both here and in the West Bank - at least a calm of sorts - since the recently elected Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, persuaded the armed factions almost a fortnight ago to commit to a period of quiet.
Next Tuesday Abbas will meet the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, at a summit in Egypt, and hopes are high for the get-
together, the first real opportunity in more than two years to start resolving the conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis since it began in September 2000.
Far from the stage of international diplomacy, Gaza's residents this week welcomed the temporary truce, which has meant a sharp decline in rockets fired at Israeli settlements and an end to Israeli incursions.
But locals have seen too many false dawns to get carried away on a tide of optimism about the chances of a lasting peace settlement.
The Zaker family from the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza are among the pessimists.
On January 27th Sayed Abdul Mati Zaker (33) was shot dead by the Israeli army a few kilometres from his house, one of up to seven people killed by the Israeli army during the period of jittery calm.
Sayed suffered from brain damage inflicted by Israeli soldiers who beat him up when he was aged 18, during the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation which started in 1987 and is now known as the first intifada.
His brain damage left him volatile and moody, and he used to take off and go walking long distances in his bare feet. He was well known locally, walking always with his right arm up to his forehead as if shielding his head from attack while waving the other hand in front.
On the day he was killed he was approaching one of the fortified Israeli towers which guard the isolated central Gaza settlement of Netzarim where some 70 religious Jewish families live.
Sayed was following the route of what used to be the main road from his home to Gaza City but has been sealed off to Palest-
inians since the current intifada broke out in September 2000.
The area where the unarmed Sayed was killed, known as Netzarim junction, is a no-go zone for Palestinians, who risk being shot. It was at this very junction that 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durra was killed during rioting on the third day of the current intifada.
The televised images of him crouching and trembling behind his father before crumpling up after being hit by a bullet became a totem of Palestinian suffering.
The Israeli army said its soldiers shouted at Sayed and fired warning shots to stop him approaching the tower before fatally shooting him.
But his family insists that his death was unwarranted. "It's not a matter that that area was dangerous. The problem is that he went there always and every time he went there he said the soldiers told him: 'Go home, you are mentally retarded.' Sometimes they gave him cigarettes," said his brother, Nashaat (30).
Palestinian and Israeli negotiators worked frantically this week to thrash out agreements in advance of next week's summit on issues such as the release of Palestinian prisoners and the dismantling of Palestinian militant groups.
But for families like the Zakers, the priorities are primarily financial. The intifada has taken an economic toll on this family who, like many in Gaza, live in considerable poverty in a sparsely decorated house made from unplastered cinder block in a decrepit refugee camp. All the men in the 20-member family are out of work.
"We are tired of this intifada because there are no jobs," said Nashaat, a former construction worker.
"A rest is good, but the problem is Israel doesn't abide by it. They killed Sayed and they killed many others."
One of Sayed's sisters added: "Things will not be better without the evacuation of the settlements because there will be military guarding these settlements and they will keep firing and fighting the Palestinians."
Are they hopeful about peace? "The hope is in the face of God," said Nashaat.
"But the Jews have no honour," added his older brother, Zakkariah (36).
Inside Netzarim settlement with its neat two-storey red-roofed houses and whitewashed walls, residents make exactly the same accusations against the Palestinians who reside beyond the settlement's extensive buffer zone.
Assi Hiller (45), a mother of 11 who has lived in Netzarim for 13 years, said the Palestinians were being quiet "only so that they get what they want. This week fewer missiles were fired by them at the settlement. They are making this quiet because they want Palsestinians in prison to be released, and that's going to be more dangerous for us."
Netzarim is one of 17 Gaza settlements slated for evacuation this summer under Sharon's disengagement plan, which most Israelis support but the settler movement is vigorously opposing.
Shlomit Ziv is a 34-year-old teacher in Netzarim's newly built rocket-resistant school which has steel shutters and a reinforced roof. She insists that evacuating Netzarim's residents - all conservative religious Jews - would not help advance peace in the region.
"I'm sure most of the people in Israel believe it's not going to help a thing. They [ the Palestinians] want Tel Aviv and they are not going to be quiet until they get it. They are willing to be quiet for a few years until they get it and then they will start up again."
Shlomit sees herself and Netzarim's other residents as continuing the work of the late 19th-century Zionist pioneers from Europe who settled what was then Palestine, making "the desert bloom".
The mother of eight firmly believes that God has bequeathed to the Jewish people the biblical land of Israel. So when it comes to talking about chances for peace, she talks from a position where compromise with the Palestinians is not on the agenda.
"There is a chance for peace when the Palestinians understand that Israel is the land for the Israeli people. Period," she said, as the mid-afternoon Muslim call to prayer started up from the distant Palestinian mosques.
Palestinians can stay, if they understand they are part of the Israeli state, she added, but not with the same rights as Israeli Jews.
"They shouldn't have the same rights exactly, or they can choose moving away from here, but they can choose that not out of force but out of understanding that this is our land, and we are going to decide the rules."
Gaza's most southerly region of Rafah close to the border with Egypt is effectively the front line of the ongoing conflict, where the Israeli army has demolished thousands of homes to prevent arms being smuggled from Egypt.
Hassan Ajrami, a Fatah leader from Rafah, said Abu Mazen's leadership is giving an opportunity to Israel.
"The success or failure of Abu Mazen now completely depends on Israel. If Israel is concerned about peace then Abu Mazen will be a success. If Israel doesn't want peace then he will be a failure," he said.
But despite Abu Mazen's recent statement that the militarisation of the intifada was a mistake, Ajrami says Palestinians' right to resist Israel's illegal occupation cannot be denied them.
"As long as there is occupation there should be resistance," he said.
"As Palestinian people we will remain fighters. We will, of course, abide by Abu Mazen's political programme and his calls for quietening the situation.
"That does not mean that the resistance will stop. As long as the occupation lasts resistance will be alive and could start again if Israel makes Abu Mazen fail."