Amid all the calls for an Israeli cease-fire in the war with Gaza, a few key facts are getting short shrift. Israel has put forth a cease-fire plan. It was negotiated along with U.S., Egyptian, Qatari, and Saudi diplomats. Its terms are quite favorable to Hamas. And Hamas is the party that’s rejecting it.

The plan, which has been on the table for two weeks, calls for a 40-day cease-fire. During this period, all military activity by Israel and Hamas will stop. Israel will suspend aerial surveillance over Gaza for eight hours of each day. Hamas will free 40 hostages—one a day. They will include women, children under 19, people over 50, and ill hostages. In exchange, Israel will free 400 Palestinian prisoners—a 10-to-1 ratio.

Also during this period, Israel will allow much more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, including 500 trucks’ worth per day, as well as a commitment to provide 200,000 tents for displaced people and 60,000 caravans. (This part of the deal was outlined before President Biden ordered the U.S. military to build a pier off southern Gaza and to send in still more supplies by ship.) Israel will also allow the entry of heavy machinery and other equipment to remove rubble and rebuild hospitals and bakeries, as well as enough fuel to power the machines—as long as Hamas pledges not to use the machines or the fuel in a way that threatens Israel.

All this is seen as the first phase of an agreement. The second phase hasn’t yet been negotiated, beyond the broad points that it should entail releasing the remaining hostages for an unspecified number of prisoners and gradually letting displaced civilians—except for men of military-service age—return to the northern Gaza Strip, from which they were evacuated in the opening weeks of Israel’s bombing campaign five months ago.

Biden hopes that a six-week cease-fire will be extended and that diplomats use the time, and the pause in fighting, to begin negotiating an enduring political settlement of........

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