Will Gaza 'calm' endure?

The prospects of a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians would hardly seem promising under any circumstances, given the former's unremitting pursuit of expansionist policies and latter's firm refusal to reconcile with the creeping occupation. The peace deal designed to put a stop to the almost daily hostile exchanges across the border between the Gaza Strip and the Jewish State has, therefore, evoked merely faint murmurs of hope; the voices of despair and doubt are much louder. History is, indeed, on the side of the pessimist; ceasefire agreements, painstakingly worked out in the past, have become ineffective at the slightest provocation. The most recent of them, enforced in November 2006, could barely last for a few weeks before the efforts to sustain it were given up. The enmity between the two sides is so deep-rooted and intense that any talk of peace is viewed with downright suspicion, not only by the parties concerned but also by the outside world.
The fate of the current truce between Israel and Hamas that came into force last Thursday, therefore, hangs in the balance. Hamas established its unimpeachable democratic credentials when it emerged as the most popular political party in the 2006 general elections. However, instead of winning the support of Washington, which had repeatedly declared its encouragement to democratic forces in the region as an antidote to terrorism, it incurred its ire, and the epithet of "terrorist outfit" became a common currency to describe Hamas. Israel, the US, its political centres, media and allies in the West, all began bandying about its terrorist background to justify its boycott. Israel, the root cause of the whole trouble, freely raiding the Palestinian-controlled areas with helicopter gunships and tanks, butchering men, women and children and indulging in targeted killings without so much as international censure, had become some kind of a saint to be backed against this hostile reality called Hamas.