JERUSALEM — When is a truce not quite a truce? Hamas is once again offering Israel a cease-fire, but the language that the Islamic movement has chosen reveals a deep reluctance to talk about any real peace with the Jewish state. Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza’s Hamas prime minister, on Wednesday proposed a ‘tahdia’ - which in Arabic means a loosely defined period of calm that falls short of a formal cease-fire. Still, this semantic nuance could well determine the success of Mideast peacemaking. As long as Israelis and the Islamic militants are killing each other in Gaza and southern Israel, a U.S.-sponsored drive to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by year’s end stands little chance. Israel is formally rejecting the truce talk, and on Wednesday its army killed four militants in the West Bank town of Bethlehem after opening fire on their car. Israel sees a broad Iranian-driven effort to besiege it from the north through Hezbollah in Lebanon and from the south through Hamas, and fears a truce will simply give Hamas time to regroup and strengthen its fighting forces. But other signs on the ground indicate that Israel and Hamas are moving closer […]