Hamas police officers embrace after their return to their destroyed Al-Saraya headquarters in Gaza City.
GAZA has come back to life after a truce ended eight days of bloodshed, with both sides claiming victory while remaining wary.
Following a night of quiet skies over the Gaza Strip and southern Israel after an Egyptian-brokered truce deal came into effect at 6am AEDT, the news agenda on both sides of the border turned to more banal matters.
In Gaza, streets which had been emptied by Israel's intensive air strikes were once again flooded with honking cars and people getting back to their daily business.
The ruling Hamas movement declared the day to be a public holiday to mark the end of hostilities, announced in Egypt late Wednesday local time by Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr at a news conference with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
After days and nights cooped up at home, residents were out en masse, traffic clogging the streets as a parade organised by militants saw people waving flags and exchanging handshakes and smiles after a night of celebratory gunfire and fireworks.
"Move it, people! Go, go, go!" one frustrated Hamas policeman shouted in a futile attempt to diffuse a traffic jam, as a coffee vendor threaded his way between the cars.
The clogged streets would have been unthinkable 24 hours earlier, as Israeli missiles fell and Palestinian rockets were launched skywards.
His voice was barely audible over the sounds of honking cars and a nearby celebration organised by militants from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Participants waved the yellow flags of the Brigades and red flags of the PFLP as residents watched from nearby buildings. The mood was palpably joyful, with strangers greeting each other with handshakes and smiles.
Outside the parliament building, thousands gathered for a celebration organised by Hamas, many waving the movement's trademark green flag.
Although it was led by Hamas, the gathering had an unusually non-partisan feel for Gaza, where the movement has often cracked down on displays of support for other Palestinian organisations, including arch-rival Fatah.
Parents carried children with the words "Hamas" in green and "Fatah" in yellow painted onto their cheeks, and some waved the flags of both movements.
Sixty-year-old Yusef Jdeidah was smiling as he watched the scene.
"The thing I'm happiest about is that the Palestinian people seem to be coming together. This, I think, is the best and most beautiful outcome of a terrible war," he said.
Overnight, the UN Security Council urged both sides to respect the hard-won ceasefire deal while hailing Egypt for mediating an end to the bloodshed.
Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr today commended Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi for helping broker the ceasefire.
Senator Carr also urged both Israel and the Palestinians to stick to the terms of the truce.
''We've got to acknowledge the steps that Israel and Hamas have taken towards a truce,'' he told reporters in Canberra.
Both Israel and Hamas claimed the ceasefire as a victory and warned they would be ready to resume hostilities should the other violate the agreement.
"Israel has failed in all its goals," Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal told reporters in Cairo late on Wednesday. "If you commit, we will commit. If you do not commit, the rifles are in our hands."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Operation Pillar of Defence had dealt a hammer blow to Hamas and other militant groups.
"I said we'd extract high price from terror organisations," he said in a televised address late on Wednesday. "We hit their senior commanders, we destroyed thousands of rockets... and we crushed Hamas's control facilities."
But there was also a warning, spelt out by Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
The ceasefire "could last nine days or nine weeks or more but if it doesn't hold, we know what to do, and of course, we will consider the possibility of resuming our activity if there is any firing or provocations," he told public radio.
In Israel, the tone was far from celebratory. "Trial ceasefire" was the headline in freesheet Israel HaYom, and "Ceasefire in dispute" was the banner on top-selling Yediot Aharonot.
And with just two months until general elections, it was back to the campaign trail for the politicians, many of whom were quick to accuse mr Netanyahu of failing to finish the job and make good on an election pledge to bring down Hamas from his 2009 campaign.
"There is no security for the residents of southern Israel. Deterrence was not restored," said Shaul Mofaz, head of the centre-right Kadima party.
"We shouldn't have stopped the operation at this stage. The ceasefire is a mistake. That is not the way to direct a war against terror," the former defence minister told army radio, predicting the calm "would not hold".
"Is this a strategic achievement for Israel? I hope it is," Labour leader Shelly Yacimovich told the station. "Unfortunately, I am not persuaded that it is."
Yediot Aharonot said the Cairo agreement "will lead to a certain period of quiet in the south" but it was only a matter of time before the border heated up again.
"Ultimately, the only interest that Israel and Hamas share is the current wish for a truce, and the understanding that the countdown has begun for the next round," it said.
During the eight eight-day operation, the army said it hit more than 1500 targets, as Gaza militants fired 1354 rockets over the border, of which 933 struck Israel and another 421 were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.
The Hamas-run health ministry said the air strikes killed 163 Palestinians and injured 1235, while in Israel five people, including a soldier, were killed by rocket fire and another 280 injured, army figures showed.
Meanwhile, the army arrested 55 Palestinian "terror operatives" in the West Bank overnight in connection with a series of recent clashes and protests over Israel's Gaza operation.
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