THE day Aref Dheir returned home from the Rafah market to tell his father he had found a buyer for their 500 boxes of tomatoes, a shock awaited him. In the few hours that he had been away, the Israelis had bulldozed their greenhouses to create a security zone for the Jewish settlement of Morag.

Not only were there no tomatoes to fill the order, the family no longer had a farm. “Twenty years of work, gone in five minutes,” Zidan Dheir, 54, the father of 23-year-old Aref and nine other children, said of that day three years ago.

Dheir had wanted to send his sons to university but could no longer afford to. Last week he and his family watched from their roof as Israeli bulldozers reduced Morag to rubble.

He has Egyptian land registry papers issued before Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 war and now hopes to get his seven acres of land back. “It’s as if my artery was cut and suddenly the doctor has reconnected it,” Dheir said.

As dramatic scenes of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) evacuating the 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank were played out on television news across the world last week, little thought was given to personal tragedies such as the Dheirs’. Most of the seaside Jewish settlements were built on empty dunes, but those like Morag devastated the lives of locals.

Mohamed Dheir, 62, a local leader, remembers the day in 1972 that Israeli bulldozers protected by tanks ploughed down his family’s 46 acres of almond trees and confiscated the land to expand Morag, a settlement of 170 Jews carved out between heavily populated Rafah city and the Khan Yunis refugee camp.

“I grew each tree as I grew my own kids. It was like taking my heart out of my body,” said Dheir, who can trace his family’s farm on that land back “six grandfathers”. He also hopes to get his land back.

Across Gaza, there are stories of land seized, crops rotting on trucks held at the border crossing, houses destroyed, sons and daughters killed or imprisoned, and increasing poverty as Israel tightened military control on Gaza to try to crush the intifada that erupted in 2000.

Last week Palestinians in Gaza were holding their collective breath, still not quite able to believe the Israelis were leaving after 38 years of occupation. The IDF plans to finish destroying the homes in the settlements by September 3 and estimates that its final job, clearing out the military bases, should be completed by September 15.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has hung 25,000 Palestinian flags along the roads in preparation for a huge celebration.

Celebrations aside, the PA, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, has decided the area will be rebuilt either as housing or used for industry.

Its first fear, however, is of a chaotic rush by Palestinians to see the places that for the past 38 years, although just yards away, could have been as distant as the moon.

Tawfiq Abu Khousa, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior and a retired general, said PA forces had surrounded the settlements. He said militias such as Hamas, the Islamic extremist group, had agreed to control their members.

Huge problems nevertheless remain that could undermine any prospect of progress for Gaza and restart the cycle of poverty, anger and extremism.

The main issue is the Rafah crossing point to Egypt. Palestinians insist that Israel must relinquish the control they have over it. They say it will be Gaza’s only outlet to the world. Keeping it under Israeli military control would make Gaza a big prison, they say. They have offered to allow a third party such as the European Union to monitor the crossing point.

Israel wants not only to keep control of the Egypt crossing, but to move it to Kerem Shalom, the only place where Israel, Gaza and Egypt intersect. “We do not feel we can rely on the Palestinians to prevent a terrorist from entering into Gaza,” a senior Israeli government official said last week.

There is more at stake than security, though, and other pressing issues could destabilise the fragile peace. With an an election in January, Abbas needs other improvements in Palestinian life if he is to succeed.

Diana Buttu, a legal official, suggests there should be a relaxation of Israeli checkpoints strangling the West Bank, an end to the building of settlements there and a release of prisoners.

Israeli, however, insists the ball is in the Palestinian court. “It is the turn of the Palestinians,” the senior Israeli official said. “We have evacuated on our side. Now they have to destroy the terrorist organisations.”

When the celebrations are over, the work to secure the peace will be just beginning.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Indian Army spends10m rupees on golf buggies
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating