It is Day Five of the cease fire, and the Israeli gunboats are booming off the Mediterranean coast.

It’s barely dawn and the Israeli warships off the Gaza Strip coast are opening fire on the small Palestinian fishing boats a few hundred yards off the shore. The Palestinians pulling in their meager hauls from the cloudy, sewage-saturated waters try to ignore the incoming fire that splashes in the waters around them.

 The Israeli ships enforcing a Naval blockage of Gaza have been firing on the fisherman every morning in an apparent attempt to keep them from getting too far from shore.

But this morning, Thursday, Jan. 22nd, the Israeli fire blasts through the morning all along the coastline. Then the Israeli fire gets closer to shore. By late morning, five Palestinians, including a little girl, have been wounded by the Israeli cease fire shelling.

This is post-war Gaza.

Whole neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Dozens of mosque minarets precariously hang at awkward angles. Dirt tank berms have become new playgrounds for Gaza City kids.

It has become easier to give people directions to our Gaza City apartment: Drive down the road and turn off at the sewage-filled bomb crater. Palestinians wait in long lines at UN warehouses to fill up cooking gas canisters.

In Rafah, scores of Palestinians have already begun to dig out their smuggling tunnels along the Egyptian border.

Kids climb 90 feet down the covered tunnel entrances to fill up bags with dirt. Caterpillar bulldozers clear away dirt so smugglers can begin digging new entrances to replace the ones caved in by Israeli air strikes. Some say they will be back in business in a few weeks. Others say it will take a few days. A few are already up-and-running.

Mohammed Barhoum stands on fuel-soaked dirt as a generator helps siphon diesel through a tunnel from Egypt. A couple of his gas lines to Egypt were damaged by the air strikes. But he’s got two lines going, and a yellow Volvo fuel truck sits alongside his makeshift fuel depot as the smugglers smoke cigarettes and talk about their trade.

This eight-mile stretch along the border is Gaza’s lifeline. Israel’s ongoing and longstanding economic blockade of the Hamas-led Gaza Strip has fueled the smuggling business that was one of the major targets of the Israeli military campaign.

Israel pounded the busy border and crippled the tunnel network. No one can say for sure how many tunnels there are. Israeli estimates put it at 250 or 350. Smugglers here say it is upwards of 1,300. Both sides agree that the Israeli air strikes put the smugglers out of business. At least temporarily.

Tunnel engineers say the air strikes transformed the border into an unstable digging area. But that doesn’t seem to be deterring many smugglers who are getting back to work.

Most of the tunnels in plain sight along the border are used to smuggle in basic goods that Israel long ago stopped regularly letting into Gaza. Things like cookies and chips, milk and cement, fuel and toilet paper.

It’s not immediately apparent what has been done to the longer tunnels used by Hamas to smuggle in weapons. And it is even less clear what Hamas was actually able to smuggle into Gaza.

Despite persistent warnings from Israeli intelligence that Hamas had smuggled in advanced rockets and other weapons to bring down tanks and helicopters, there was virtually no sign of them during the fighting in Gaza. Gaza militants managed to fire a handful of advanced rockets that sailed deeper into southern Israel. But they packed little punch. And if Hamas militants had smuggled in better weapons to fight the Israeli army, they didn’t prove it on the battlefield.

Standing in a ravaged public park in Gaza City’s Tel Hawwa neighborhood, a masked Hamas militant boasts of the group’s triumphs.

While kids nearby play on tank berms and the surrounding buildings are scarred by tank fire, this Hamas militant commander says Israel fell right into its trap. He boasts of the great victories and contends that Hamas destroyed seven Israeli tanks and APCs in this neighborhood.

He claims that Israeli soldiers were so scared and confused by Hamas tactics that they haphazardly opened fire on civilians. He contends that Hamas didn’t fight in civilian areas or put Palestinians at risk, even though he admits that militants tried to lure Israeli forces into the urban neighborhoods in an attempt to ambush the forces.

He contends that Hamas lost only 48 fighters and argues that Israel lost far more soldiers than it is willing to admit. (Nine Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza, with at least five killed by friendly fire.)

The masked commander with his AK-47 strapped awkwardly across his generous pot belly hardly seems like a military strategist. He makes vacuous boats of triumph while surrounded by rubble. And the dirty penny loafers he wears don’t seem to match the camouflage pants and jacket he is wearing. It is somehow reminiscent of the Iraqi officials who claimed that US forces were not in Baghdad even as split screen images showed American tanks taking over the city’s airport in the closing days of the 2003 invasion.

“They did not achieve anything,” the Hamas commander says before heading off into the ruins of Gaza City.