Israel and Hamas are not that far from a ceasefire agreement

WHEN HAMAS announced, on the evening of May 6th, that it had agreed to a ceasefire with Israel, the mood in Rafah turned jubilant. Thousands of people cheered and danced in the streets of Gaza’s southernmost city, hopeful that there might soon be an end to the seven-month war that has devastated the Palestinian enclave.The celebrations were premature. Israeli officials said there were problems with the proposed agreement—that it was different from the earlier text that they had agreed to last month (foreign diplomats insisted the changes were minor). The next morning a column of Israeli tanks rumbled along the Philadelphi corridor, a strip of land along Egypt’s border with Gaza, and seized the Rafah crossing, the main entry point for humanitarian aid throughout much of the war.