GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — In war, nobody wants to be the last to die. In Gaza, it was the chief of the electric company’s maintenance division and his deputy. In Israel, it was a pair of volunteers working a security detail on their kibbutz.

The four deaths on Tuesday, hours before an open-ended cease-fire began between Israel and Hamas, reflected the often indiscriminate, opaque and lethal nature of a conflict that dragged on for 50 days and more than 2,100 deaths, only to end where it began, with a truce deal that is essentially a retread of the one signed in 2012 after the last Gaza war.

The cease-fire was still holding Wednesday, and that was good news in a conflict beset by breaches by Hamas and the other militant resistance groups operating in the Gaza Strip. Israeli drones could still be heard flying circles overhead, but there was no rocket or missile fire. In Gaza, fishermen went further out to sea than they have in years, and farmers were allowed to work fields close to the Israel fence line.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel had dealt Hamas “the greatest blow since the organization’s founding.” But in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader there, praised the 1.8 million residents of Gaza as “the true heroes.” It was Mr. Haniyeh’s first public appearance since the war began seven weeks ago.

U.N. agencies report that 2,104 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza hostilities, including 495 children and 253 women. Sixty-nine Israelis were killed — 64 of them were soldiers, alongside five civilians and one worker from Thailand.

Among those who perished in the final hours, Mohammad Daher, a 49-year-old Palestinian, was a chief of maintenance in the northern district for the Gaza Electricity Distribution Corporation, and Mr. Daher and his 27-year-old deputy, Tamir Hamad, who was driving a company pickup truck when eyewitnesses say an Israeli missile struck the vehicle.

“They wouldn’t even let me see his body in the morgue. He was just pieces,” said his brother Raed Daher, a Gaza policeman who worked for the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, not for Hamas.

Inside Israel, just a few hours after Mr. Daher was killed, a dozen mortar rounds from Gaza rained down on a kibbutz called Nirim. It was just an hour before the cease-fire began. Shahar Melamed, 43, and Zeevik Etzion, 55, were outside repairing an electricity line damaged earlier in the day by a previous barrage.

More than half the kibbutz residents, particularly those with young children, had fled their homes during the 50 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas. Some stayed to work, manage the animals and tend to the fields.

“The other side tried to destroy us, they tried to make us leave,” said Mr. Rubenstein, referring to Hamas. “But we are committed to staying here. This is our home; we won’t leave.”