"He says something in the [Cairo] speech about the United States has to respect elections. Now that's either Hamas or Lebanon," said Weiner. "If that was a hat-tip to the notion that we have to negotiate with Hamas or provide aid to the territories, which he is going to try to do—these are now substantive things that there is disagreement on in the pro-Israel Jewish community. Then he'd be going against 75 percent of where people are."

In the Op-Ed page of last week's Times, Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister and Kadima Party leader, argued against allowing groups like Hamas into open elections.

"Say he wants to send aid to Gaza, which he does, well that's hard to do," added Weiner. "That's the equivalent of sending aid to Iran. I don't care what kind of N.G.O. you go through, you are still sending aid to a government that is pretty hostile."

"I do think that if you have a plan to provide aid to the people of Gaza or you start to negotiate with Hamas, then you are into a place where you might get some liberals saying, ‘Yeah, well why not,'" said Weiner. "But then you are in a different place because you are pushing the envelope some."

The New Yorkers delivered a clear message: Israel has every right to respond to the brutal rocket attacks that have terrorized villages near the Gaza Strip. Regrettably but perhaps not surprisingly, such common sense is all too rare these days. European critics seem to believe that Israel has no right to defend itself. What’s more, they appear to believe that the terrorists are actually victims of Israeli aggression. George Orwell surely would have appreciated such logic.

The presence of the mayor, commissioner and congressman in Israel was important, for Israel is never more friendless than when it fires back against its terrorist enemies. The world’s rules of engagement apparently do not apply to Israel in the eyes of critics. When the United States was attacked on 9/11, it responded with massive firepower, routing the Taliban from power and inflicting heavy casualties. Few found fault with the American response; none dared call it disproportionate.

But when Israel responded to months of daily rocket fire with its campaign in Gaza, the usual crowd of unthinking critics immediately denounced the move as the moral equivalent of a war crime. They argued that Israel’s response was out of proportion to the Hamas provocation. One wonders if they would say the same thing if they were on the firing line in southern Israel.

Simply put, no nation on earth would fail to respond to rocket fire on its citizens. What is remarkable about the current offensive is not that it is taking place, but that it took so long to unfold. Israel exhibited extraordinary patience in the face of the Hamas barrage. It responded only when it became clear that Hamas had no intention of halting its campaign against Israeli civilians. What government would do otherwise?

The Israeli foreign minister and other officials have done a creditable job responding to critics, patiently explaining that they did not fire the first shot, but surely hope to fire the last shot. But they should not be lonely voices. American politicians and commentators must rally to Israel’s side in this contentious hour, for the battle in Gaza is America’s battle and the West’s battle.  So long as Hamas finds sympathy throughout the world despite their despicable actions, they will continue to bait the Israelis and many lives will be lost.

The terrorists who target civilians in southern Israel have a quarrel not just with Jews, but with America, the West, and the 21st century. New Yorkers know all too well that terrorism is hardly contained to the Middle East. We are in the cross hairs, just as surely as Israel is.

The Hamas rockets have a limited range, but the ideology of those who fire them spans oceans and continents. Israel understands that. New Yorkers understand that. We should be thankful that we have leaders like Messrs. Bloomberg, Kelly, and Ackerman who understand that Israel must not stand alone. We are in this fight, too.

Farfur, a Mickey Mouse clone with a bow tie, tailcoat, and screechy high-pitched voice, was the star of Tomorrow's Pioneers, a Friday morning program aimed at preschoolers. He was played, Barney-the-dinosaur style, by an adult wearing a plush body suit topped off with a large, wide-eyed and perpetually smiling mouse head, and he appeared alongside Sara, a pretty teenaged presenter with a penchant for pastel headscarves.

Together, Farfur and Sara presented a series of short skits about subjects ranging from the importance of taking pride in the Arabic language to the goal of achieving Islamist rule in historical al-Andalus (present-day Spain and Portugal), and they took live on-air phone calls from children as young as three.

In one episode, Farfur spoke a few words of English and was scolded for doing so by Sara, who explained to him that he shouldn't be fooled into thinking that English is the language of progress. In another episode, Farfur was sitting in an elementary school classroom among a group of children taking a test when a teacher suddenly began twisting one of his black cartoon-mouse ears and accusing him of cheating. Farfur burst into tears, explaining that he'd cheated because "when the Jews destroyed our home, I couldn't find my notebooks."

The Farfur character drew horrified reactions from officials of Fatah, the Palestinian party that Hamas has been battling for control of the territories, as well as from Israeli and Western commentators.

The New York Daily News dubbed Farfur "terror mouse."

A Palestinian political analyst, Hani Habib, flatly told Reuters that Tomorrow's Pioneers was a recruitment tool for Hamas. Several Arabic newspapers, including Al Watan and Asharq Alawsat, covered the Farfur controversy.

Diane Disney-Miller, the only surviving daughter of Mickey's creator, called Farfur "pure evil" and demanded that he be taken off the air. Farfur was called "despicable" by Walt Disney C.E.O. Robert Iger, though Disney stopped short of issuing a formal statement on the subject.

"We were appalled by the use of our character to spread these messages," Mr. Iger said at a convention of the Society of American Business Editors & Writers, according to news reports, adding that Disney didn't "want to prolong the situation." "We didn't believe us making a statement would make Hamas do anything differently," Mr. Iger added.

Some Beirut-based friends of this writer jokingly gave Farfur a nom de guerre, Abu Jibneh (Father of Cheese, in Arabic). But the Farfur tapes – which are still widely available on YouTube--don’t actually provide much in the way of levity: piping voices of kindergarteners saying "We don't like the Jews because they are dogs," a Mickey clone dancing to a song about the joys of carrying an AK-47 against Israel.

After the Palestinian Authority's Minister of Information, Mustafa Barghouti, demanded that Al Aqsa take Tomorrow's Pioneers off the air, the station's programmers responded by killing off the show's mouse hero on live children's television.

On the June 29th episode of Tomorrow's Pioneers, Farfur appeared in a scene with an Israeli agent character who demanded that the mouse relinquish his lands to the Israelis. When Farfur refused, the Israeli agent character beat him to death, and as his anguished screams gradually subsided, the camera panned to Sara, who sat calmly before a wall covered with the kind of colorful foam tiles that might protectively line the play area of a nursery school.

"Yes, dear children, we have lost our dearest friend, Farfour," Sara explained, furrowing her brow and gazing into the camera, in a clip of the final program that was translated by Middle East Media Research Institute. "Farfour was martyred while defending his land, the land of his fathers and his forefathers. He was martyred at the hand of the criminals, the murderers, the murderers of innocent children."

Fatah was quick to take the moral high ground on an issue that was clearly outraging so many Western observers.

"I don't think it's professional or even humane to use children in such harsh political programs,'' Basem Abu Sumaya, the director of Fatah's Palestinian Broadcasting Corp, told the Associated Press.

"Children's nationalist spirit must be developed differently.''

But Farfur is hardly the first cartoon character used to discuss martyrdom with young children. As pro-Israel groups hasten to point out, Hamas and Fatah have employed such characters in the past, forming part of a long tradition of using anti-Jewish symbols to educate young children about nationalism.

"PA TV, Fatah's TV station, has been broadcasting such children's programs and music videos for children for over 10 years," said Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch, in an email. "A prominent example is Tarabisho the Talking Chick, a talking puppet on a PA children's television program for preschoolers. Some of his messages were as dangerous as ‘Farfur Mouse’ but did not receive as much exposure because they were not Mickey Mouse clones."

Joshua Landis, an historian of the Arab world at the University of Oklahoma who has written about nationalist education in the region suggested that Farfur may be a symptom of growing anti-Semitism.

"Anti-Semitism in the Middle East is growing steadily as the situation in Palestine becomes ever more hopeless and depressing for Arab viewers," Dr. Landis wrote in an email. "The war in Iraq and proliferation of violent Islamist groups and rhetoric is fanning the flames of anti-Semitism."

Though the horror and rage with which many Westerners have reacted to the Farfur character may be based on assumptions about the political naïveté of children and the essential innocence of the cartoon medium, here perverted, some commentators have suggested that these are not functional notions in an environment where children are exposed to extreme violence from a young age. All children's education is to some degree political, they say.

The Disney company itself produced propaganda cartoons during the second World War. Farfur is the product of a time and a place where education about nationalism is done mainly by defining the community in opposition to the other.

Lee Smith, a Hudson Institute visiting fellow who is writing a book about the Arab media, pointed out that though Farfur has received an unusual amount of attention in the Western media, young children dressed up liked suicide bombers frequently participate in parades organized by Hamas.

"I would imagine that Farfur has got a lot of attention because we all know Mickey Mouse, and we can make easy analogies and say, look at how our symbols are being used," Mr. Smith said. "The fact that it's Mickey Mouse really pushes it to another level for us. But in fact, if you're parading 7-year-olds in martyr costumes, you've already reached that level."

"Farfur pushes all of our buttons not just because it's a cartoon figure but because it's our cartoon figure," Mr. Smith continued. "Watching Farfur's death, the obvious comparison is the death of Bambi's mother. And I think that's intentional. When you put the Israelis, the Zionists on a show as the murderers of a fuzzy pet, a nice animal, you're establishing them in children's minds as the absolute embodiment of evil."

When asked about the scene in which Farfur blames the Israelis when he is caught cheating in class, Mr. Smith laughed.

"Not only did the Zionists kill Bambi," Mr. Smith said. "But also, the Zionists ate my homework."

After the swearing in over the weekend of a Palestinian unity government, cracks quickly began to appear in the Western diplomatic boycott to which the Palestinians have been subjected since Hamas’ victory in last year’s elections.

Norway’s deputy foreign minister met with Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Monday. Britain, Germany and Italy have suggested that their doors are at least ajar to discussions with the Palestinians. And one leftist Israeli politician, Yossi Beilin, has responded positively, suggesting in remarks published yesterday by The New York Sun that the Israeli government should be more amenable to negotiations.

The U.S., for its part, has said that its ban on aid to the Palestinian government will remain intact, but it has also noted that it will not shy away from talks with non-Hamas members of the new coalition.

It is much too early to be celebrating the dawning of a new era, of course. On Monday, an Israeli civilian was shot at a fuel depot about 300 yards from the border with the Gaza Strip. The shooting was claimed by Hamas’ armed wing, which stated that the action was “a response to continued Zionist aggression.”

It is little wonder, given such actions, that Israel is reluctant to engage with the new Palestinian body.

“It is surely a mistake to give legitimacy and recognition to an unreformed extremist,” said Israeli foreign-ministry spokesman Mark Regev, “and it cannot serve the purpose of peace.”

To Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his allies, the changes heralded by the formation of the new government are illusory.

But does the maintenance of a hard-line attitude actually help or hinder Israel’s own interests, and the broader cause of peace in the region? One example from thousands of miles away—the Irish peace process—suggests that such an approach may be both shortsighted and counterproductive.

There are obvious parallels between the current situation in the Middle East and the earliest days of Ireland’s slow and agonizing march toward peace. The formation of the Palestinian unity government, for example, has been greeted with much the same blend of opprobrium and suspicion that met the so-called Hume-Adams talks of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.

That dialogue, between John Hume, then-leader of the moderate Irish nationalist Social Democratic and Labor Party, and Gerry Adams, president of the I.R.A.’s political wing, Sinn Féin, is now almost universally acknowledged to have laid the groundwork for a historic peace agreement in 1998.

At the time, however, Mr. Hume was accused, as the moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is now, of legitimizing unreconstructed terrorists.

Suspicion of Mr. Adams—and calls for his exclusion from political negotiations—were even more vituperative, with one British newspaper, for example, referring to him as “one of … the most formidable enemies to peace in Ireland’s bloodstained history.”

Fortunately for the Irish, the U.S. administration of the time didn’t take the naysayers’ view. President Bill Clinton’s decision to grant Mr. Adams a visa to visit the U.S. in 1994—a move made against the advice of the State Department, the Department of Justice and the F.B.I.—is now seen as crucial in persuading Irish militants to join the political process.

There are many other parallels. Hamas’ election triumph last year was widely seen as a disaster for Israel and for U.S. policy in the region. But those pronouncements of doom echo those that followed the election of imprisoned I.R.A. hunger-striker Bobby Sands to the British Parliament in 1981.

At the time, the Sands result was seen purely as strengthening the I.R.A.’s hand. Later, it came to look a lot more like the pivot upon which the conflict turned: It opened Irish militants’ eyes to the potential of participating in the electoral process while simultaneously helping bring the British to an acknowledgment that the conflict could not be ended purely by military or “security” means.

At present, Israeli politicians are demanding the continued isolation of the Palestinian government, in part because of Hamas’ refusal to explicitly recognize Israel, and because the government’s platform includes an assertion of the right to “resistance in all its forms.”

The Israeli concerns are valid—but they are also eerily reminiscent of the attempts of pro-British politicians to exclude Sinn Féin from political negotiations because the I.R.A. had not declared its ceasefire to be permanent.

Mr. Adams and his comrades have never to this day explicitly stated that the state of Northern Ireland is legitimate, nor have they disavowed the I.R.A.’s campaign. Rather, their actions—at present, Martin McGuinness, a onetime I.R.A. commander, is on the verge of becoming the deputy leader of Northern Ireland’s devolved government—have rendered such semantic points moot.

There are, of course, fundamental differences between Hamas and the Irish Republican movement. Perhaps the most significant is that Hamas triumphed in last year’s elections while unambiguously wedded to its military campaign, whereas the I.R.A.’s armed struggle came to be seen as retarding Sinn Féin’s political ambitions.

Nonetheless, the moment is ripe to encourage Palestinian militants to head down a similar path. Over the weekend, Britain’s Sunday Telegraph reported the release of Hamas commander Salah Arouri from an Israeli jail and quoted him as follows: “We are harmed if we target civilians. At the end of the day, the fruit of military actions is political action. All wars end with truces and negotiations.”

It could have been Mr. Adams talking 15 years ago.

Likewise, even before this weekend’s announcement, Hamas’ decision to take part in elections and to take its seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council was more momentous than perhaps even the group’s members fully appreciated.

Almost every armed struggle is underpinned by grandiose claims of ideological purity. Any engagement with the electoral process erodes those justifications, because it brings the would-be revolutionaries into the messy business of realpolitik, however reluctantly, and makes it more difficult for them to ignore the will of the broad mass of people, who are almost never as radical as the guerrillas themselves.

Making peace with erstwhile violent groups is a delicate business: It requires not merely pressure or concessions, but a nerve-wracking combination of both. But now is the time to engage with the Palestinians.

Yasir Arafat used to talk about a “peace of the brave.” He never showed that bravery himself. Neither Israel nor its friends in the West should be found wanting now.

In America, the frustration grows even among those least engaged in what is going on. The years pass and nothing changes but the numbers of the dead and wounded. They may not know that they are still being lied to, but they see George Bush doing the Trudge and recognize it for what it is.

The Trudge is the trip abroad where our officials meet the same officials in the same rooms and walk out of them to make the same statements they made the last time and the time before the last and the time before that. The Trudge to China, the Trudge to Israel, the Trudge to Egypt, to Iraq, to Afghanistan—all to no avail. One Trudge merges into the next. In her most recent Trudge, Condi Rice announced to a less-than-breathlessly-awaiting world that “I came here to Ramallah, as I am going around the Middle East, to say to everyone that the United States is deeply committed to finding ways to accelerate progress on the road map. The road map, after all, is the internationally recognized guide to the establishment of a two-state solution, and we should fulfill all of its terms.

“I am also here to talk about how we can build on the momentum that is currently in Palestinian-Israeli relations, to look at the political horizon and to begin to show to the Palestinian people how we might move toward the establishment of a Palestinian state …. ”

These words came a few days after the United States let it be known that it is shipping $88 million worth of guns and ammunition to Fatah, the moderate (or obedient) Palestinian political party, to be used to fight Hamas, the extremist (or disobedient) Palestinian political party, which was unruly enough to win the last election in that sad half-prison/half-Bantustan containing some 3.5 million people.

Fatah was the party of Yasir Arafat, who, while he lived, was denounced as too corrupt and too dictatorial to be a negotiating partner. Hamas, now denounced as a collection of Islamo-fascist fanatics, was once the recipient of money from the Israelis, who built it up to cancel out Fatah. What Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice are doing in Palestine is the equal of an Iraqi government hanging. Ponder it: Here are these millions of Palestinians, literally walled in and trapped on what little land has yet to be stolen from them, with the United States government shipping in guns so they can kill each other while withholding, via the agency of Israel, everything from food to schoolbooks. And all because the cursed Palestinians voted the Fatah crooks out of office in favor of overly pious Hamas.

The line of Trudgers arriving in Iraq is a long one. The place is so dangerous that most Trudgers’ arrivals must be kept secret until they have been safely stored in the Green Zone, that palace of foreign-policy pipe dreams. Outside the Green Zone, the blood flows. The United Nations guesses that 34,000 Iraqis died in the non-civil war last year. Each body contained about a gallon and a half of blood. When spilled, does that cumulatively constitute a trickle, a stream or a river?

However fast it runs, there is nothing we can do to staunch it. The President says that keeping up the flow on Blood River is the way to win. The commentators say he’s doing it for his legacy. We say goddamn his legacy, but the blood continues to flow as the Trudgers keep on trudging.

Talk is heard of trying to apply a tourniquet by impeaching Bush. If it proved to be impossible to successfully impeach and remove a President from office for having out-of-wedlock sex, what chance is there of doing it for spilling blood?

Then is there nothing we can do but watch the flow meters on Blood River? No, remember the power of the purse—the Congressional power to withhold the money to continue the war. Alas, there’s no chance with that one, either; the politics of it are wrong. Men and women hoping for re-election are not going to put themselves in a position to be attacked for leaving our service people high and dry.

Odd as it may be, the best means of stopping the flow is not by withholding money for the war, but by raising more of it. It is a way that shelters the Democrats from being called soft on the war on terror, closet pacifists and defeatists.

The Democrats can tax our way out of the war. This would be a Victory Over Terror tax (V.O.T.), to be levied on incomes of $5 million a year or more. It should be a surcharge of 20 percent over and above what people in that rarefied income bracket are already paying. It should be levied on all income, regardless of what form it takes, and would include stock options, jet-plane rides, company-paid health and life insurance, retirement programs, golden parachutes, the use of apartments in Paris, cars and drivers, and so forth.

The people in this stratospheric income category have enjoyed the big tax cuts that went into effect despite the fact that the nation had been attacked and was going to war. Individuals making $1.25 million a year have gotten tax cuts of almost 20 percent, but many of these people would be spared paying the Victory Over Terror tax, which only cuts in at the $5-million-a-year level.

This is a tax designed to collect from those whose only stake in the war so far has been to make money off of it. They have no material interest in winning it, but this tax would give them one: The V.O.T. would apply until Congress votes to declare the war against terrorism officially won and ended.

Needless to say, those paying this tax do not represent the Democrats’ voter base. As these things go, this is politically pain-free. The tax is aimed at war profiteers, overpaid C.E.O.’s and grossly fat cats in general, most of whom carry a lot of weight at the White House. Since the tax will last as long as the war does, it will give this group a powerful incentive to work for victory—or at least for peace—fast and soon.

If there is any group of people in the world whom George W. Bush listens to, it is this bunch of billionaires. With this tax on their backs, this group will not look kindly on new escalations or expansions of the conflict to Iran or Somalia. They will have been made stakeholders in a quick end to the fighting.

Call this a backdoor use of the power of the purse, or call it what you will: The V.O.T. beats trudging any time.

Instead, the early durability of the cease-fire underscores the weakness of both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Hamas adversaries, as well as the fact that an all-out confrontation in Gaza is simply not an option. Whether it’s in the Jabaliya refugee camp or among the row houses of the battered border town of Sderot, a fatigue has set in after five months of war. Mr. Olmert and Hamas have precious little political capital to order a new escalation in the fighting.

For Hamas, endorsing the truce agreement means buying time to entrench itself as the new Palestinian ruling party. For Mr. Olmert, the cease-fire is preferable to ordering a controversial invasion of the Gaza Strip while the government and army are still under investigation for their botched war against Hezbollah this past summer.

“There’s no doubt that Olmert, [Defense Minister Amir] Peretz and Chief of Staff [Dan] Halutz are influenced due to the fact that they are now under inquiry, and that everybody looks at them with a magnifying glass,” said Danny Yatom, a Knesset member from the Labor Party. “Everybody follows their steps, moves and decisions very closely. There’s no doubt it has an effect on them.”

That’s not to say the government wouldn’t garner support if it were to decide to abandon the truce in favor of an offensive to stop rocket launchers and weapons smugglers.

For weeks, Israeli security hawks and military generals have been beating the drums for an all-out invasion of Gaza reminiscent of the 2002 “Defensive Shield” operation in the West Bank. At the beginning of the week, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the cease-fire is allowing Palestinian militants to rearm with more sophisticated weapons and turning Gaza into southern Lebanon.

But it’s precisely the bitter experience of last summer’s inconclusive offensive against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters that makes the possibility of a serious military campaign in Gaza so unappealing.

Almost a replay of the Lebanon nightmare, an offensive in Gaza would expose Mr. Olmert to a howl of international approbation over civilian casualties, as well as domestic hand-wringing over new reservist call-ups—all without the promise of actually eliminating the Gaza militants.

“Of course [a Gaza invasion is] very frightening for him, because of what happened in Lebanon—the way the army conducted itself, the possibility of having no results to show in a short time, and the possibility of international pressure,” said Avraham Diskin, a political-science professor at Hebrew University.

Mr. Diskin described the cease-fire as ad hoc strategizing—a byproduct of a variety of stresses on Mr. Olmert, ranging from his sagging popularity to an investigation into allegedly corrupt real-estate deals, to the tensions with coalition partners.

“I think he’s really under a lot of pressure,” Mr. Diskin said, and “that at least some of the decisions he’s making are due to those pressures.”

Cease-fires have been notoriously unstable over the course of the six-year Palestinian uprising, partly because of the Palestinian Authority’s lack of control over myriad militant groups operating in the West Bank and Gaza.

Hamas, with years of prestige at the forefront of the “resistance” to Israeli occupation, had always been a critical linchpin in reaching initial agreement on the truces. But because the Islamic militants never played a political role in the Palestinian government, there was little downside to ordering the organization’s military wing back into action.

Now, for the first time, Hamas finds itself in charge of a Palestinian Authority paralyzed by an international-aid boycott and unable to contain a rising tide of lawlessness. While other militant outfits have pledged to retaliate for alleged Israeli violations of the cease-fire in the West Bank, Hamas has remained committed to the cease-fire.

That’s because the Islamic militant politicians recognize that the organization can’t make good on promises to reform and revitalize the Palestinian government at the same time that its military wing is ordering rocket attacks on Israeli towns.

Over the last week, an Israeli military judge ordered the release of Palestinian public-works minister Abdel Rahman Zaidan after four weeks in prison. The newly released Hamas cabinet member said he believed that his release owed partly to the fact that he is an outspoken supporter of the truce.

“At this time, we are convinced that we cannot resolve any issue with force,” he said. “This is a no-win situation. For that reason, we think a calming would be more fruitful for everyone. There is a need for development and rebuilding.

“There are needs for the Palestinians that the guerrilla fight doesn’t achieve,” Mr. Zaidan continued. “The guerrilla fight is only for annoying the Israelis and giving them a sense of insecurity. We know this won’t achieve our final goal.”

A break in the fighting gives Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party an opportunity to focus on negotiations on a power-sharing agreement meant to pave the way for a restoration of international aid. The rivals are keenly aware that their public has grown weary of the unending cycle of violence.

“Both Hamas and Fatah realize that the Palestinian people are getting bored of this,” said Omar Shaban, a Gaza-based political analyst. “People are suffering a lot, and they want to relax. They know that more goods might come in, the borders will open, and there might be employment. They know if the fighting goes on, it will mean more suffering. People feel that there’s no use [in the fighting], and that no results have been achieved.”

To be sure, the odds still seem stacked against the long-run prospects for the latest Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire to succeed. Several factors seem to point toward a weakening of the truce: the ongoing hiatus in peace negotiations, the inability of Israel and Hamas to reach a prisoner swap that would release Cpl. Gilad Shait after nearly six months of captivity in Gaza, and the stalemated Hamas-Fatah unity talks.

But for the time being, Israel is cautiously reducing military activity in the West Bank. And even those doves cynical about Mr. Olmert’s peace offering to the Palestinians are quietly holding their breath for something bigger.

“The cease-fire is not only a necessary move; it’s a chance to replicate the cease-fire to the West Bank and turn it into a lever for negotiations with the Palestinians,” said Ran Cohen, a member of the left-wing Meretz-Yachad party. “Even if it was just lip service, in the Middle East, lip service might trigger movement in unpredictable ways.”

Instead, the early durability of the cease-fire underscores the weakness of both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Hamas adversaries, as well as the fact that an all-out confrontation in Gaza is simply not an option. Whether it’s in the Jabaliya refugee camp or among the row houses of the battered border town of Sderot, a fatigue has set in after five months of war. Mr. Olmert and Hamas have precious little political capital to order a new escalation in the fighting.

For Hamas, endorsing the truce agreement means buying time to entrench itself as the new Palestinian ruling party. For Mr. Olmert, the cease-fire is preferable to ordering a controversial invasion of the Gaza Strip while the government and army are still under investigation for their botched war against Hezbollah this past summer.

“There’s no doubt that Olmert, [Defense Minister Amir] Peretz and Chief of Staff [Dan] Halutz are influenced due to the fact that they are now under inquiry, and that everybody looks at them with a magnifying glass,” said Danny Yatom, a Knesset member from the Labor Party. “Everybody follows their steps, moves and decisions very closely. There’s no doubt it has an effect on them.”

That’s not to say the government wouldn’t garner support if it were to decide to abandon the truce in favor of an offensive to stop rocket launchers and weapons smugglers.

For weeks, Israeli security hawks and military generals have been beating the drums for an all-out invasion of Gaza reminiscent of the 2002 “Defensive Shield” operation in the West Bank. At the beginning of the week, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the cease-fire is allowing Palestinian militants to rearm with more sophisticated weapons and turning Gaza into southern Lebanon.

But it’s precisely the bitter experience of last summer’s inconclusive offensive against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters that makes the possibility of a serious military campaign in Gaza so unappealing.

Almost a replay of the Lebanon nightmare, an offensive in Gaza would expose Mr. Olmert to a howl of international approbation over civilian casualties, as well as domestic hand-wringing over new reservist call-ups—all without the promise of actually eliminating the Gaza militants.

“Of course [a Gaza invasion is] very frightening for him, because of what happened in Lebanon—the way the army conducted itself, the possibility of having no results to show in a short time, and the possibility of international pressure,” said Avraham Diskin, a political-science professor at Hebrew University.

Mr. Diskin described the cease-fire as ad hoc strategizing—a byproduct of a variety of stresses on Mr. Olmert, ranging from his sagging popularity to an investigation into allegedly corrupt real-estate deals, to the tensions with coalition partners.

“I think he’s really under a lot of pressure,” Mr. Diskin said, and “that at least some of the decisions he’s making are due to those pressures.”

Cease-fires have been notoriously unstable over the course of the six-year Palestinian uprising, partly because of the Palestinian Authority’s lack of control over myriad militant groups operating in the West Bank and Gaza.

Hamas, with years of prestige at the forefront of the “resistance” to Israeli occupation, had always been a critical linchpin in reaching initial agreement on the truces. But because the Islamic militants never played a political role in the Palestinian government, there was little downside to ordering the organization’s military wing back into action.

Now, for the first time, Hamas finds itself in charge of a Palestinian Authority paralyzed by an international-aid boycott and unable to contain a rising tide of lawlessness. While other militant outfits have pledged to retaliate for alleged Israeli violations of the cease-fire in the West Bank, Hamas has remained committed to the cease-fire.

That’s because the Islamic militant politicians recognize that the organization can’t make good on promises to reform and revitalize the Palestinian government at the same time that its military wing is ordering rocket attacks on Israeli towns.

Over the last week, an Israeli military judge ordered the release of Palestinian public-works minister Abdel Rahman Zaidan after four weeks in prison. The newly released Hamas cabinet member said he believed that his release owed partly to the fact that he is an outspoken supporter of the truce.

“At this time, we are convinced that we cannot resolve any issue with force,” he said. “This is a no-win situation. For that reason, we think a calming would be more fruitful for everyone. There is a need for development and rebuilding.

“There are needs for the Palestinians that the guerrilla fight doesn’t achieve,” Mr. Zaidan continued. “The guerrilla fight is only for annoying the Israelis and giving them a sense of insecurity. We know this won’t achieve our final goal.”

A break in the fighting gives Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party an opportunity to focus on negotiations on a power-sharing agreement meant to pave the way for a restoration of international aid. The rivals are keenly aware that their public has grown weary of the unending cycle of violence.

“Both Hamas and Fatah realize that the Palestinian people are getting bored of this,” said Omar Shaban, a Gaza-based political analyst. “People are suffering a lot, and they want to relax. They know that more goods might come in, the borders will open, and there might be employment. They know if the fighting goes on, it will mean more suffering. People feel that there’s no use [in the fighting], and that no results have been achieved.”

To be sure, the odds still seem stacked against the long-run prospects for the latest Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire to succeed. Several factors seem to point toward a weakening of the truce: the ongoing hiatus in peace negotiations, the inability of Israel and Hamas to reach a prisoner swap that would release Cpl. Gilad Shait after nearly six months of captivity in Gaza, and the stalemated Hamas-Fatah unity talks.

But for the time being, Israel is cautiously reducing military activity in the West Bank. And even those doves cynical about Mr. Olmert’s peace offering to the Palestinians are quietly holding their breath for something bigger.

“The cease-fire is not only a necessary move; it’s a chance to replicate the cease-fire to the West Bank and turn it into a lever for negotiations with the Palestinians,” said Ran Cohen, a member of the left-wing Meretz-Yachad party. “Even if it was just lip service, in the Middle East, lip service might trigger movement in unpredictable ways.”

He ought to cite the insight of his former NSA Zbig Brzezinski, who said on public television that as the Carter Administration geared up the Camp David process in '78, Israel was led by an extremist party, Likud, that refused to accept the existence of "Palestinians," let alone their right to a state. And yet the U.S. and the Egyptians talked to those extremists.

The Palestinians are not the only unreasonable people in this mess.

Here is something that Richard Silverstein, whose progressive Jewish blog I recommend (Tikun Olam, http://www.richardsilverstein.com) tried to say about the question of Israel talking to Syria.