The recent truce between Israel and Hamas has held so far.
Nevertheless, many Israelis are skeptical of the arrangement,
viewing it as little more than a lull allowing Hamas to rest and
rearm. Few of them were moved when it became public that a
leading cleric in Gaza issued a religious edict making it a sin
to violate the agreement. These doubts are representative of a
broader rejection of truces in the west. When we think about
truces at all, we consider them mere stepping stones in the
transition beyond themselves, to something better and more
durable—a stable and permanent peace that settles all
outstanding questions. Anything else, we tend to believe, is a
short respite before the next war. Three years after the
outbreak of World War I, Pope Benedict XV published a plea
calling on the combatants to hold their fire, reduce the amount
of weapons at their disposal and agree to arbitration. His call
went unheeded. The Wilson administration went out of its way to
clarify why it could not accept the pope’s plan