Palestinians in Gaza Savor First Taste of Freedom : Autonomy: Troops get farewell shower of stones and lob tear gas in return. But opposing colonels share a laugh.

Just hours before this area exploded in celebration of Israel officially ending 27 years of military occupation, an Israeli colonel and his Palestinian counterpart stood in the darkness early Wednesday discussing the last-minute logistics of the historic transfer of power.

Suddenly, the Israeli stopped in mid-sentence. He looked up at Col. Faisal Fahoum, the Palestinian brigade commander who had just set foot on his home soil for the first time since he left as a child when modern Israel was created in 1948.

“I can’t believe we’re standing here next to each other talking like this!” the Israeli said.

Fahoum, a warrior once committed to destroying Israel, smiled and replied: “If you came to me two years ago and said we would be here together like this, I would have laughed and called it the Eighth Wonder of the World!”

The two lifelong enemies then laughed together. They clasped hands. And before the sun was up, they helped usher in the dawn of a new era of Palestinian autonomy, as Israeli commanders turned over the last of their bases.

Thus ended a two-week transition to Palestinian rule in Gaza. It was accompanied by farewell showers of Palestinian stones, retaliatory grenades of tear gas and thousands of rounds of joyous Palestinian gunfire. The encounter between the two colonels was but one of many scenes that captured the irony and incredulity of Gaza’s first moment of freedom--and the Israeli military’s first taste of relief.

“Thank God we’re gone!” said a young Israeli soldier flashing the V-sign from a jeep crossing the border into Israel, where a young Palestinian soldier who lived his life in exile flashed V-signs on his way in.

When the last Israeli soldier left just after sunrise from the border post of the Israeli army spokesman’s office, which issued the only official accounts of the hundreds of Palestinians and scores of Israelis who were killed during the decades of occupation, he threw his rucksack over his shoulder, slammed a door scrawled with the large Hebrew word for “Closed!!!” and declared: “Finally, it’s really over.”

Inside a third-grade classroom of a Palestinian school at the refugee village known as Beach Camp, deep inside Gaza, an 8-year-old Palestinian boy reflected just how dramatic this week’s transformation has been for the nearly 1 million Gazans. The boy’s eyes grew wide with disbelief when he spotted through his classroom window the first armed Palestinian patrols.

“Look!” he shouted to his teacher. “They are our Jews!”

“No,” his teacher explained gently and with cautious pride. “They are Palestinians. They are our new Palestinian security force, and today we are celebrating them. We are celebrating our new flag, our new freedom, the beginning of our new state.”

But for most Gazans, it was just that--a beginning.

And after the sun rose on the newly autonomous Gaza--which will be governed along with a small enclave around the West Bank town of Jericho by a Palestinian Authority--the celebrations quickly gave way to the realities of the limited self-rule agreement between Israel and Palestine Liberation Chairman Yasser Arafat.

The accord allows almost 5,000 Jewish settlers to remain in 13 sprawling enclaves throughout Gaza. There Israel merely redeployed many of its soldiers to protect the settlers during the coming years of continuing negotiations. Israel also will control Gaza’s borders, its airspace and territorial waters.

The settlements, in particular, are problematic. The Israeli military was forced to cancel a ceremony pledging their future in Gaza when leaders of the settlement where the event was to occur said they wanted no part of it. And foreshadowing how the Israeli enclaves are likely to become flash points for violence, a Jewish settler was wounded at the Gaza settlement of Nitzarim in a Wednesday night drive-by shooting.

Even Gen. Nasser Yussef, commander of the new Palestinian security force--the symbol of the first real change here since Israel began making peace with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors almost three years ago--said he told his Israeli counterparts early Wednesday: “This is a partial agreement, and it needs more.” He insisted that the settlers ultimately must leave Gaza.

Yussef spoke with cautious pride when he met with reporters at the Gaza City Governor’s Mansion--the headquarters of Israel’s military governor and the Egyptian and British occupation commanders in the Gaza Strip before him.

“This is the kind of feeling that was paid for with thousands of lives of our people,” he said, describing Wednesday. “This is an immortal day. This is a day we have all dreamed of. This is a day of great joy. . . . But it is just a first step.”

He quickly turned to more practical matters. As his ragtag force fanned out into military bases that the Israelis had stripped bare, other Palestinian officers began directing traffic.

And Yussef established his goals, saying, “Our first priority is security.”

He said his new force has no plans to confiscate weapons from Gaza’s many well-armed resistance groups, including Islamic fundamentalists and leftist underground militias that oppose Arafat’s autonomy plan. He said he hopes that owners will quickly register their weapons and that the arms ultimately will be brought under his commanders’ control.

“Hamas is part of our nation,” he said of the best-organized, most potent fundamentalist opposition to Arafat’s PLO faction. “They are our brothers. We have had a lot of contacts and meetings. . . . We will work together.”

But Brig. Gen. Doron Almog, Yussef’s departing Israeli counterpart and the last Israeli to leave the autonomous Gaza Strip, was less certain. He was reacting to vows by Hamas and other radical Palestinian groups to continue their attacks on Israeli targets until the last Jewish settlement is out of Gaza. “I’m walking on tiptoes,” he told Israel Radio. “I estimate there will be terrorist activities, and we, as any army, have to be prepared.”

But Almog also found reasons for optimism Wednesday. “The Palestinian police are very motivated for peace, and that gives us great hope,” he said of the force reassembled from Palestinian brigades that have served under half a dozen Arab armies for the last three decades. “And also they are disciplined--not organized, but disciplined.”

Most Gazans, especially after the celebrations had died down later Wednesday, shared Almog’s concern about the security in the Gaza Strip in the days to come.

Consider the views of Nasser Dajany. He owns the Jala Theater, which was shut by the Israelis, along with every other movie theater in Gaza, seven years ago. “We want very much to start up again, but we will wait two or three months. It depends on how secure the situation will be,” Dajany said.

He said he has complete confidence the new Palestinian police can keep order. But he fears opposition to his enterprise from Islamic fundamentalists, who have condemned movies as a sinful and decadent form of entertainment.

Meantime, he and other Gazans found great happiness in a simpler pleasure: They again can stroll the streets after 8 p.m. For seven years, since the start of the intifada , the Palestinian uprising, the Israeli military imposed a strict nightly curfew.

Tuesday night and Wednesday night, however, the streets of Gaza City were jammed with families. “It’s such a great joy just to be able to walk in these streets at night,” one young woman said.

* MISSING BLUEPRINT: Palestinians worry about lack of guidelines from PLO. A10.