The New York Times · 25 May 1994

CP-1994-065

Gaza’s Palestinians Revel in Daily Joy of Freedom

By YOUSSEF M. IBRAHIM / Special to The New York Times

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Transcribed from the clipping

GAZA, May 23 — Perhaps the most dramatic measure of the Palestinians’ first week of self-rule in Gaza has been the sudden normalcy in people’s lives: barbecuing at the beach, leaving home without I.D. cards, chatting in coffee shops long past the former curfew and strolling by police stations without throwing a stone.

The 900,000 Palestinians packed into this tiny strip of Mediterranean coast, once described by a Gaza psychiatrist, Dr. Iyad Elsaraj, as “tribal, conservative, rigid, confrontational, prone to violence and wildly moody,” have, in fact, behaved in the most remarkably affable way.

Since May 18, when the Israeli Army began to withdraw, the Palestinians here have immersed themselves in joyful celebration. Calves and sheep have been slaughtered to feed the 5,000 or so Palestinian policemen who streamed into Gaza over the last 10 days to replace the Israeli police. Mounds of food and sweets make their way daily from each neighborhood to the police camps.

On the whole, Gazans and foreign visitors alike say, these first few days of autonomy for the four cities, eight refugee camps and seven villages that make up the Gaza Strip — widely viewed as a lawless urban jungle — have gone rather well. If anything, Gazans are demonstrating a kind of political maturity that many analysts did not anticipate.

Many, in fact, predicted factional fighting would break out among those who support and those who oppose the peace accord between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel immediately after the Israeli soldiers pulled back . It could still happen. But fewer people are willing to believe it now,

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