But a report issued last month by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights described a “high-risk zone” extending almost a mile from the fence, and said residents did not understand the new policy. While many of the 35 farmers that the agency surveyed throughout the buffer area reported feeling safer on their land and being able to bring more workers for longer hours, they also said that they had not been able to use tractors close to the fence and had been frequently driven from the area by warning shots. The report cited an “increased level of uncertainty” and said the restrictions “undermine the livelihoods” of Palestinians in Gaza and put them at risk.

“The restricted area’s identification is loose,” said Tareq al-Qatta, an agricultural project supervisor with the aid organization Oxfam International.

Ali Abu Said, who has a field close to Mr. Ettewi’s new peppers and is director of the Palestinian Farmers Society here, said he brought a bulldozer to level his land for planting last month, and within an hour an Israeli military jeep pulled up to the fence and fired at his vehicle.

“The soldiers are moody — we do not know why they shoot,” Mr. Said said. “We want to know if this is a restricted area or not. We do not have the enthusiasm to plant our lands here again, because nothing is clear or taken for granted.”

Sari Bashi, director of Gisha, an Israeli group that advocates free movement of people and goods to and from Gaza, said the buffer zone was part of a series of “unfulfilled promises” from the November cease-fire brokered in Cairo. The fishing area off Gaza’s coast was doubled to six nautical miles from three, but only near the end of the fishing season, Ms. Bashi said; exports were stymied when Israel closed the Kerem Shalom crossing after rocket fire from Gaza in March, and permits for travel to the West Bank remain rare.

“There’s been no real change in an overall policy of closure,” Ms. Bashi said. “There’s a clear message from Israel’s allies — Egypt, the United States and Turkey — that restrictions on movement into and out of Gaza need to be lifted, but that has not yet happened.”

Mr. Said of the farmers’ society said that Israel began limiting access to the area in 2000, with the start of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, and that he was shot while working his land that year. The buffer zone was formally established when Hamas, the militant Islamic faction, took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Mr. Said said the next April, the Israeli military leveled all but two of hundreds of clementine and lemon trees he had planted on nearly five acres.

“I will not risk again and plant trees,” he said. “Because the trees need years before you could pick their fruits, and who knows what the situation will be in the future.”