At the key intersection of Gaza's Netzarim Corridor and the Salaheddin Road, US and Egyptian security personnel, armed and wearing military fatigues, inspected vehicles carrying Palestinians, many of them displaced by the war.

On Monday morning, traffic moved slowly to the checkpoint at the crossing, which Palestinians call Martyrs Intersection, and from which Israeli forces withdrew a day earlier.

Ahmed al-Rai said the US and Egyptian officers were "respectful" even if their checks on vehicles were "slow and trying".

Calling the reopening of the roads a "positive step forward", Rai said he hoped the intersection would eventually be "fully open without searches by the Americans".

At the current pace, he explained, "it takes 20 minutes to inspect each vehicle".

The 50-year-old had to wait five hours before his own turn came, he told AFP.

A source in the Hamas-run interior ministry confirmed that "under the truce agreement between Hamas and Israel, there are American and Egyptian security personnel" at the junction linking northern Gaza and its........

© Al Monitor